((Done by Wendy Dare, summer 91))


\fINEWSWEEK\fR MAY 20, 1991

PAGE 3

\fIThe Quayle Question:  Can He Fix His Image?\fR

So why is it so hard for Dan Quayle?  Last week George Bush's health
problems forced Americans to CONFRONT the reality that Quayle, ready
or not, was no more than a fluttering heartbeat away from the Oval
Office.  Polls showed that most voters thought he should be dropped
from the Republican ticket in 1992.  But is Quayle a lightweight-or
smarter than the public THINKS?  \fINEWSWEEK\fR examines Quayle's
efforts to change his image-and assesses the prospects for his
political future.

PAGES 6-8 \fIPERISCOPE\fR

GUN CONTROL  \fIBrady's Campaign Gifts\fR

AuCoin voted for the Brady bill after previously opposing it.  He
EXPECTS the anti-Brady National Rifle Association to target him for
"lying" to voters because of his previous stance.  AuCoin, a Democrat,
would run against GOP Sen. Bob Packwood, who hasn't announced his
views on the Brady bill.


EXCLUSIVE  \fIBush:  A Letter From the Heart\fR

Three days after being hospitalized for an erratic heartbeat, he
mailed Bob Woodward a typically good-humored note for sending him a
signed copy of "The Commanders," Woodward's not always flattering
behind-the-scenes account of the gulf war.  The note read, in part, "I
HOPE Saturday's book review in The Washington Post is not an accurate
portrayal."  The president's punch line:  "My heart rhythm jumped a
space or two when I read that...Sincerely, George Bush."

ABORTION  \fIA Test for the Abortion Pill?\fR

The pill, which induces miscarriages in the first seven weeks of
pregnancy, has been hailed by pro-choice advocates as a non-surgical
alternative to abortion.  The drug's maker has been RELUCTANT TO
pursue FDA approval for fear of anti-abortion boycotts.  Pro-choice
supporters HOPE New Hampshire will INSPIRE other state legislatures to
come forward to support the pill.

GOVERNORS  \fIMadam Sheriff\fR

     Whatever Kansans THINK of Gov. Joan Finney, they aren't likely to
FORGET her.  Finney, who likens herself to Margret Thatcher, recently
ordered lawmakers to "get the heck out of Dodge" and end an unusually
long session.  Equally memorable are Finney's personal idiosyncracies,
such as playing harp on an early-morning network news program.  Last
week Finney panicked her security detail by suddenly DECIDING to walk
to work.  But she soon flagged down a passing motorist and hitched a
ride instead.


PAGE 10  MY TURN  \fIHaving to Say You're Sorry\fR

The loan guarantees were reviewed by a committee that included
representatives from the State Department, Commerce, the Federal
Reserve Board, the U.S. trade representative's office and the Treasury
Department.
      As a political scientist based in Washington, I understand
what's behind today's finger pointing:  inter-agency rivalries,
competing demands on policymakers' attention and-most of all-a natural
RELUCTANCE to be a scapegoat for political decisions that in
retrospect were so obviously wrong.
     Since I am also a civil-service brat, I UNDERSTAND the
conflicting pressures on government employees as well.

If my mom and dad had to justify sending militarily sensitive
equipment to a country that gassed its own citizens, would they defend
the standing policy, or admit that it was flawed and possibly lose
their jobs?  I DON'T KNOW, nor AM I SURE I would respect them more for
toeing the line or for taking a fall for decisions made by people at
higher levels.
     The buck has to stop somewhere, though.  And I think polls are
eliciting the public's mixed feeling about our actions in the Middle
East partly because no one, at any level of government, SEEMS able to
admit having made mistakes in our past or present dealings with Iraq.
We are all proud of the job the U.S. troops did liberating Kuwait, but
the Bush administration has had little to say about why we had to go
to war in the first place and even less about the fighting that is
still going on inside Iraq thanks largely to U.S. military decisions.

Havel concluded his address by saying that although the cold war was
ending, the world was receding from, rather than approaching, the
establishment of a moral society.  As he put it, "We are still
incapable of UNDERSTANDING THAT the only genuine backbone of all our
actions, if they are to be moral, IS RESPONSIBILITY." 
     Indeed, the American political system seems to reward officials
who are good at evading responsibility more than those who seek it out.

Role models like these at the top can send the message down the system
that the way to get ahead is to not get caught.
     On the other hand, surely one reason for Gen. Norman
Schwarzkopf's media appeal was that he talked freely in interviews
about how acutely responsible HE FELT for every soldier he might have
to send into combat.  Other military officers expressed the same
FEELINGS about the men and women under their command, in countless
television and print stories.  Obviously, the armed forces and the
political system offer different incentives for honesty, but we still
should THINK ABOUT why our military officers are so much more WILLING
TO acknowledge that their actions have consequences than our political
leaders are.
     A variety of commentators have applied the "lessons of the gulf
war" (invest in manpower, use flexible strategies, know your enemy,
etc.) to public-policy issues ranging from poverty to education.


PAGES 12-16 LETTERS  

\fITwice Violated?\fR

     I was IMPRESSED with your cover story ("Naming Names," NATIONAL
AFFAIRS, April 29) on whether the media should report the names of
rape victims.  As a women's-rights advocate and attorney specializing
in civil rape cases, I maintain that victims' names should be released
only with their permission.

   Isn't the accused presumed innocent?  REMEMBER that in the Palm Beach
rape case the alleged assailant hasn't been convicted.

   OVERLOOKED in all the furor about publication of rape victims names
is a more rational alternative:  suppression of the names of both
victim and accused.  Publication of a victim's name places the
victim's reputation on the line, but publication of the accused's name
places the accused's life and economic future on the line.

   Having been raped 13 years ago, I FIRMLY BELIEVE it is the rape
survivor's right to choose whether to be publicly identified.

Part of the process for me was to disclose my name and rape story
recently on local television.  Because I'd had time to recover and
CHOSE to come forward myself, this disclosure was a celebration of
self-empowerment.  It wasn't another terrible thing that "happened" to
me, as forced disclosure would have been.

   Rape is indeed a crime of violence, not of sex.  That is why I
BELIEVE the media should disclose the names of rape victims.  In the
long run, treating all crime victims equally will help erase the stigma
that haunts those who have been raped and hopefully ENCOURAGE more
women to report sexual assaults.  We must educate people about this
crime so that, at the very least, they'll stop asking, "What was she
wearing?"

   I'm certainly no fan of the Kennedy family; their womanizing is
infamous.  However, if this Palm Beach woman drank all evening in a
bar with Sen. Ted Kennedy, his son and his nephew, and then willingly
went back to their house with them at 3:30 in the morning, I THINK she
will be hard pressed to GARNER MUCH SYMPATHY for her rape claim.

   How does revealing a rape victim's name make us, as NBC News
president Michael G. Gartner says, "BETTER INFORMED"?  Does he really
think that knowing a victim's name will help us "IN MAKING UP [OUR]
OWN MINDS" about what happened?  How wonderfully cavalier of Gartner
to sacrifice the victim and violate her rights of privacy for the
benefit of future generation of rape victims.

\fIPolicy vs. Privacy\fR

   As a passionate and dedicated civil libertarian, I am APPALLED that
some people are fighting government efforts to warn pregnant women of
potential risks to their unborn child's health.  Anyone who would
fight a law as reasonable as one requiring liquor sellers to post
warnings about the effects of alcohol on unborn children has clearly
lost his or her moral bearings.

\fIReducing the Risks\fR

   Dr. Robert Noble's statement "Smart people don't wear condoms,"
although WELL intended, is misleading and potentially dangerous
("'There Is No Safe Sex'," MY TURN, April 1).  Noble may be correct in
suggesting that the only certain ways to prevent sexual transmission of
HIV (the AIDS virus) are either to abstain from sex or to have sex
with one faithful, uninfected partner.  However, as laboratory
evidence shows, condoms are highly effective in preventing the sexual
transmission of HIV when used consistently and correctly.  We must
ensure that the PERCEPTION THAT condoms are unreliable does not become
a self-fulfilling prophecy.

\fIBuddy Who?\fR

   From what planet were you reporting when you said that Buddy Edsen
in "a nearly FORGOTTEN TV actor" ("The Adoration of the Elvii,"
LIFESTYLE, April 22)?  Not as long as local television stations
endlessly rerun "The Beverly Hillbillies," not to mention "Barnaby
Jones," the classic film "Breakfast at Tiffany's" or "Captain
January," with Shirley Temple.

\fIA Costly Insight\fR

   As a physician undergoing treatment for the same type of leukemia
Dr. Geoffrey Kurland has ("As Doctor's Case," MY TURN, April 15), I
can UNDERSTAND many of his experiences.  Kurland, however, failed to
note one valuable-albeit painful-aspect of the affliction.  Physicians
who become cancer patients learn what it is like to be seriously ill
in America in the '90's.  As a physician-patient, I EXPERIENCED
firsthand the aloof, impersonal and machinelike nature of the American
health-care system and its doctors.  The experience has shown me the
extent to which American medicine has failed as a healing art.  I
BELIEVE my illness has made me a better physician.  But my INSIGHTS
have come at a high price.

\fIBidding on Baseball\fR

   Yes, Buffalonians (not Buffaloans, as you termed us) love their
Bisons, whose 1 million-plus attendance for each of the last few years
has surpassed attendance in several major-league ballparks.  But your
jokes about Buffalo's weather, while EXPECTED, are unsupported by the
facts:  Buffalo's days of sunshine compare in number with any other
city's in the state; an average summer day reaches 75 or 80 degrees.
Factor in a nice breeze off Lake Erie and you get better baseball
weather than you could find in the District of Columbia or Florida.

\fIOffending Buzzwords\fR

   In 28 years of nursing, I've never heard one of my colleagues use
the phrase "POF" ("Pillow on Face"), which, according to your
Buzzwords column, is what we call a person who complains too much
(PERISCOPE, April 29).  Nurses have enough trouble with image without
NEWSWEEK putting words in our mouths and calling us "angels of mercy"
with "a DARKER SIDE."  Please!  We are educated patient advocates,
caregivers and managers, educators and researchers.  If we have a DARK
SIDE, it shows only when the media say MINDLESS things about us.

\fINo Sympathy for Detroit\fR

   I was FURIOUS when I read, in "Detroit Pleads Its Case" (BUSINESS,
April 8), that the head of the Big Three U.S. automakers were seeking
relaxed environmental regulations to aid them in their losing battle
against the Japanese.  We cannot afford to subsidize this industry,
especially at the expense of the environment.  Letting these dinosaurs
FEEL the pressure fully-to the point of extinction if necessary-will
make possible the evolution of a truly healthy American automobile
industry.  Keeping the Big Three on respirators will just drag the
rest of the country down with them.

   I'm sure the Japanese government bases auto-industry DECISIONS on
what's best for its own people.  Why shouldn't we?

PAGE 19  PERSPECTIVES  

\fIOverheard\fR

"I BELIEVE that was the most comprehensive introduction I have ever
received.  You omitted perhaps one thing-that in 1974 I had a
hemorrhoidectomy."
   \fIAlabama Se. \fR HOWELL HEFLIN, \fIon his lengthy introduction at
   a meeting of the American Bankruptcy Institute\fR

"It was not a trivial component.  It gave us an indication that things
weren't being handled too badly."
   \fIA senior White House official, on how the administration KNEW
   the public was on its side on gulf-war press restrictions after
   "Saturday Night Live" began lampooning the war media.\fR

"I HOPE this doesn't cast a shadow over his plans."
   RICHARD C. GARVEY, \fIa former roommate of William Kennedy Smith,
on the rape charge against his friend by Florida police\fR

"It was like going to a movie:  we paid our money, we went to the
theater, we laughed, we cried, the movie ended and an hour later we
had FORGOTTEN about it."
   \fISaudi financier\fR ADNAN KHSHOGGI, \fIon the return to business
   as usual in the kingdom after the gulf war\fR


PAGES 20-33  NATIONAL AFFAIRS

\fITHE QUAYLE HANDICAP\fR

   Then the president's heart fluttered, and the snickering stopped.
At the White House last week, aides spoke privately of "the terror
factor," the PANIC felt by voters when they thought of Quayle only a
heartbeat away.  All very unfair, the president's men protested, but
pervasive nonetheless.  A New York Times/CBS poll last week showed
Quayle with a 19 percent favorable rating.  Most voters THOUGHT THAT
he should be dropped from the Republican ticket in 1992.  SO DID some
50 newspaper editorial pages around the country.
   The dump-Quayle movement cooled off after a few days when the
president's doctors announced that Bush was suffering from Graves'
disease, a thyroid condition that could be readily treated (page 27).
In a crude way, Bush stood by his number two, threatening to make an
obscene gesture to reporters who demanded to know if Quayle would get
the heave-ho in '92.  "I don't KNOW how many times I have to say it,"
Bush hotly declared, "but I'm not going to CHANGE MY MIND."  Official
Washington closed ranks.  "I WISH everybody would just lay off Dan
Quayle," said Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont.  "At some
point is goes way beyond fairness."

"That should be the issue."
   A bit WISHFULLY, perhaps, Quayle aides THOUGHT they SAW an
opportunity to make voters take a fresh look.  The flurry of press
attention provided a chance to lay out all the good things done by the
vice president.

Conservative columnists rallied to the cause.  The vice president's
men HOPED for a public backlash against the Quayle-bashers in the
press, and that the media itself would DECIDE that denouncing Quayle
was an old story.  Quayle was made available to newspapers and news
magazines for interviews (though not to NEWSWEEK; Quayle spokesman
David Beckwith said the magazine was being punished for unfair
coverage of the vice president).
   
Traditionally, the role of the vice president is to do essentially
nothing, at least nothing very presidential.  Bush WANTS it that way.
When he was Reagan's number two, he was loyal and discreet to a fault,
and he EXPECTS Quayle to follow his example.  Quayle has tried to be
visible, but his actions tell little about what kind of president he
would be.

Even so, Quayle did have the savvy to instruct a press aide to call
CNN every hour to repeat the administration's vow to use air power.
Quayle KNEW the rebels were more likely to be watching the tube than
listening to official channels.  
   In the gulf crisis, Quayle was QUICK TO SEE the need for a
congressional resolution supporting the use of force.  At White House
meetings, Quayle has been more outspoken than Vice President Bush ever
was.  Last March, alone among the president's advisers, Quayle
suggested that the United States intervene to help the Kurdish
rebellion.  But he didn't PUSH THE IDEA, and he was quickly rolled by
the more cautious Powell.  
   Quayle is an effective lobbyist for the administration among his
old colleagues in the Senate, and he is a valuable go-between with the
business community.

Only lately has he agreed to watch videotapes of himself to learn from
his mistakes.  Quayle's aides concede that he SEEMS stiff and tinny
reading from a script.  But they are AFRAID THAT if he is allowed to
ad-lib, out will come howlers such as his statement after the San
Francisco earthquake that "the loss of life will be irreplaceable."
   Quayle's friends WOULD LIKE to persuade the president to give their
man a challenge that would show off his talent.  ONE IDEA would be to
dispatch him to the Middle East to negotiate an arms-control
agreement.  With his close ties to the Israel lobby, maybe Quayle
could cajole hard-line Israeli leaders to give a little.

As vice president, Bush, too, was dismissed as an empty suit.  But the
president is also FRUSTRATED.  An earnest striver, Bush can't quite
UNDERSTAND why Quayle doesn't pull himself out of his hole by
discipline and hard work.  Among friends, when conversation turn to
Quayle, the president usually falls silent.

Certainly, he is a decent man, a good father and friend.  Quayle's
challenge is to find a way to prove to a DOUBTING public that he has
grown into a man of presidential proportions.

\fIRx For The Veep\fR

   As Dan Quayle KNOWS all too well, the vice presidency is the sand
trap of American politics.  It's near the prize, and designed to be
limiting.  But Quayle has to make the best of a difficult situation.
His strategy, so far, is to attend Republican fund-raisers, accept
pats on the back from the president, play up his inside-the-room White
House role and incite a backlash against television talking heads and
print pundits he FEELS HAVEN'T given him a break.  None of that is
enough.

   \fBGet Out on the Trail.\fR  Playing campaign heavy in 1992 could
be the most direct way for Quayle to sharpen his image as a
conservative-and a fighting symbol of the entire party.  He could
attack Democrats on crime, on spending, on most Democrats' REFUSAL to
authorize the gulf war.  The attack role is traditional for vice
presidents in a re-election.

"He has to set a hurdle for himself, and then clear it."
   \fBGet Loose.\fR  Longtime friends and advisers FRET THAT Quayle,
once an easygoing, self-confident figure, has become stiff and
uncomfortable in public appearances.  Quayle has resisted coaching but
looks as if he's overprepared.

"He looks like he's not playing to win-but merely not to lose."
   \fBGet Another Sport.\fR  Even though baby boomers have DISCOVERED
the virtues of golf, Quayle needs to stay off the course.  "Golf
reinforces every negative stereotype he has to deal with," says
Democratic consultant Bill Carrick.

   Above all, Quayle needs to get outside the cocoon he's been wrapped
in since his searing introduction to national politics in 1988.
Quayle was-and is-ADMIRED FOR his common touch and SURE SENSE of
politics.  "He could peck corn with the chickens," is the way longtime
Indiana reporter Gordon Englehart once put it.  All Quayle has to
do--and it's not easy in the hurly-burly of national politics--is sell
himself the way he did back home in Indiana.  That might not make him
president, but it might put the country a little MORE AT EASE.

\fIWhy Quayle Is Doomed\fR

But if Quayle is no John Kennedy, he's no Richard Nixon either.
   What ails Quayle isn't quite as simple as IT LOOKS.  If it were
just a matter of refurbishing his image, then he would be the favorite
of 1996.  After all, image make-overs are relatively common in
politics.

In other words, Truman wasn't really a hack, but a shrewd student of
people and American history.  Nixon wasn't really a mere hatcher man,
but a man of world-class POLITICAL INSTINCTS (for better or worse).
LOOKING BACK, refuting the "wimp factor" was an easy political task
for Bush, requiring only REMINDERS of his World War II service, a few
pork rinds and Ronald Reagan's departure.
   Why can't Quayle eventually make the same breakthrough?

   \fBPolitical suicide:\fR  If Quayle had the opportunity to run
something-like a cabinet department-he might prove that he has more
substance.  Dwight Eisenhower had THIS IDEA FOR Nixon in 1955, when he
unsuccessfully tried to get him to step down as vice president and
take a cabinet post.  But Quayle, like Nixon, KNOWS he can't do that.
It would LOOK as if he had been ousted.  The irony is that the one
step that might address his basic problem would also be political
suicide.
   Obviously, it's not necessary to be a rocket scientist in order to
be president.  Still, if you are not especially IQ-smart-and you
ASPIRE to the very top, as Quayle presumably does-you must be
extremely smart in some other way.  Reagan, for instance, was a
brilliant charmer-a high achiever when it came to articulating vision
and getting other people to like him.  Quayle might possibly
neutralize the "DIM BULB" charge if he showed himself to be truly
gifted in some other area of politics.  But the limitation of the
office of vice president will prevent him from doing that.
   Isn't it CONCEIVABLE that a more impressive Dan Quayle will emerge?
Yes.  Impressiveness is a relative trait, and the LOW EXPECTATIONS of
Quayle may help him.  For nearly three years, though, he has shown no
signs of beating his rap.

It hasn't helped.  Verbal gaffes that wouldn't even be NOTICED if
someone else made them stick to him like putty.  The more he tries to
create a serious new political persona, the easier it is for even one
mistake to start the Jay Leno jokes rolling again.  The gibes may be
unfair, but they work because people SEE truth in them.
   The truth they SEE is that Dan Quayle just doesn't have it, even if
they don't KNOW exactly what "it" might be.  Perhaps it's our
collective SENSE that we can still HOPE FOR more than mediocre when it
comes to running the country.  It's this INSTINCT that lies at odds
with recent political history, which favors Quayle in 1996 and beyond.
After all, four of the last six U.S. presidents were once vice
president.  The difference is that Americans have taken a bead on this
vice president, and unless grim history intervenes, they have no
particular reason for CHANGING THEIR MINDS.


\fIThe Right's Point Man\fR

   Start from the right wing's premise that the Bush administration is
essentially an interregnum-better than the Democrats, but in reality
just a holding action until 1996 and the coming of the conservative
new messiah.  This man (a woman, after all, is highly unlikely) will
be tested in the fires of the Republican primary campaign and FOUND to
be both militant and ideologically pure-the true heir to Barry
Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, the one man to lead America to the
millennium and the right.  Is Dan Quayle the man?

He is trying hard, given George Bush's pronounced preference for team
players, to minister to the needs of the conservative movement without
making waves.  So far as outsiders can TELL, Quayle has spent most of
the past two years listening and learning.  Within the
administration's privy councils, he has spoken up for conservative
points of view only on carefully selected issues. But he has assembled
a crackerjack staff of young, politically astute neoconservatives, and
he is widely REGARDED as the Bush administration's ambassador and
ombudsman to the Republican right.
   Quayle's shop is KNOWN in administration circles as Fort Reagan-an
inside joke that accurately expresses both its function as a nerve
center for conservativism within the Beltway and the movement's
current MOOD of nostalgic uncertainty.  Former drug czar William
Bennett says Quayle's staff is "about the best in Washington, in terms
of IQ."

It is arguable that Quayle, though widely derided as an intellectual
lightweight, is running a neoconservative think tank within the White
House.  Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot says he relies on
Quayle's staff to provide a "conservative reality check" on the Bush
administration; New Republic writer Morton Kondracke says he "WOULDN'T
THINK" of doing a White House story without calling them.
   The QUESTION ON THE MINDS of many veep watchers, naturally enough,
is how much of his performance in office has been Quayle's own doing
and how much has been the staff's.  Opinions vary.  Quayle, through
his aides, has wooed conservatives by letting it be KNOWN that he was
among the first to warn the president against the dangers of cutting a
deal with the Democrats during last year's tax-and-deficit
negotiation. He is said to have urged Bush to veto the civil-rights
bill of 1990.

There is nonetheless the unmistakable SENSE of faint and conditional
praise in the current attempt to rebut his many critics.  "We do NOT
KNOW how well Dan Quayle or any other officeholder would perform as
president if he were called upon," The Wall Street Journal concluded
last week.  And Bennett, asked to place Quayle on the ideological
spectrum, could only say the vice president is "sui generis."
   \fBOne of them?\fR  That is probably not good enough to consolidate
Quayle's standing with the movement.  Even today, many conservatives
have a COMPULSION for ideological saliva-testing, and Quayle has
sometimes betrayed an unnerving TASTE for moderation.  Despite his
impeccable credentials as a scion of Indiana Republicanism, he had the
temerity to differ with Ronald Reagan on a few high-profile issues in
the Senate:  imposing sanctions on South Africa, establishing the
birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a federal holiday and a
proposal to impose the death penalty for drug kingpins.  True
believers DISLIKE the pragmatism of some of his advisers, like media
consultant Roger Alies and pollster Robert Teeter, and supply-siders
have reason to DOUBT that he is one of them.  Jack Kemp, then a
Republican congressman and now secretary of housing and urban
development, once spent most of a long plane ride trying to convince
Quayle of the wisdom of supply-side dogma.  "I don't KNOW, Jack-o,"
Quayle said as Kemp wrapped up his argument.  "What about the
deficit?"
   The other question that haunts conservatives is the
fire-in-the-belly problem.  Quayle, according to those who KNOW him
well, is an amiable man with little TASTE for political wrangling or
ideological dispute; some DOUBT that he WANTS the presidency enough to
lead the right wing's counterattack against the forces of moderation.
Thinking ahead to 1996 (following story), some see a Republican field
that could include Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, Sen. Phil Gramm of
Texas, former Delaware governor Pete du Pont and evangelist Pat
Robertson, all of whom are experienced performers on the national
circuit and true-blue conservatives as well.  All of this is why
Quayle is still an unproven commodity to many right-wing activists-and
why, if he WANTS to win their support for the battles ahead, he will
have to find some large and public way to deliver the goods.

\fIJockeying for 1996\fR

   At first glance, it LOOKS LIKE a Republican intramural Little Big
Horn, with Dan Quayle in the role of a surrounded and imperiled
General Custer.  At last count no fewer than a dozen Republicans are
THINKING--with one degree of intensity or another--about running for
president in 1996 after what they assume will be George Bush's second
term.  The list ranges from the exalted, such as Secretary of Defense
Dick Cheney and Secretary of State James Baker, to the relatively
obscure, such as South Carolina Gov. Carroll Campbell.  "We've hot one
hell of a farm team," says GOP insider Stuart Spencer.
   But what may SEEM dangerous for Quayle's long-term political
prospects is also a crucial short-term insurance policy.  The
president isn't getting pressure from the Republican wanna-bes to dump
Quayle.  Their reasoning is classically simple deviousness.  If Bush
DECIDES to switch now, they THINK, he might pick a more politically
potent running mate, who would then have a head start toward the 1996
nomination.  None of the rivals-with the possible exception of Baker,
Bush's buddy-could be SURE THAT the president would tap him.  "The
last thing Jim Baker WANTS is for, say Dick cheney to get the vice
presidency," say GOP strategist Ed Rollins.  "It's much more
convenient for everyone of Dan Quayle stays right where he is."

A decision to switch veeps could open the Republicans to the
fratricidal schisms that lie just beneath the calm surface of Bush's
81 percent approval rating.  Pro-choice and right-to-life activists
are ACHING for an opportunity to make dramatic stands at the GOP's
convention next year in Houston.  A veep change-which would have to be
approved by the convention-would give them that chance.

He may, but it's not a sure bet.  In the latest CBS-New York Times
poll a plurality of Republicans THINK the president should dump
Quayle, but the margin is a narrow 47-42.  A slim majority of
Republicans, 52 percent, say that they would WORRY if Quayle had to
assume presidential duties.  Yet 43 percent of those surveyed
CONSIDERED him qualified for the job.  "He's not dead meat," says one
GOP consultant.  "He's just lightly broiled."
   He is singed enough, however, for a number of Republican rivals and
their supporters to begin PLANNING to push him aside.  Sen. Phil
Gramm, a hard-boiled conservative from Texas who now heads the GOP's
Senate campaign committee, has made no secret of his lust for the
White House.  

California Gov. Pete Wilson is a national political presence and
counts the plugged-in veteran Spencer among his advisers.  Baker,
those who know him say, WANTS to keep searching for diplomatic
victories-which may be difficult-before TURNING HIS ATTENTION to a
possible '96 run.  Campbell, who may soon DECIDE to run for the Senate
in South Carolina, is also sketching '96 PLANS.  Had the late Lee
Atwater lived, he might have been Campbell's 1996 campaign manager.
HUD Secretary Jack Kemp is an established presence and hasn't given up
THOUGHTS of trying for the White House again.
   But the very fact that so many rivals are lining up for 1996 could
work to Quayle's advantage.

Friend and adviser Mitch Daniels says Quayle has yet to look beyond
1992.  But those who KNOW Quayle testify to a fierce competitiveness
that lurks beneath the smooth face and genial demeanor.  Just because
Quayle happened into the vice presidency doesn't mean he won't fight
to get the top job.

\fIAn Untapped Asset\fR

   Marilyn Quayle had serious image problems of her own when she became
Second Lady in 1989.  While her husband fought a losing battle to get
TAKEN SERIOUSLY as a vice presidential candidate, she came off as the
real-life Church Lady:  pious, aloof and perhaps a touch resentful of
her spouse's improbable rise.  The 1950s flip perm, the weird
Inauguration Day hat--one columnist likened it to a dog-food dish--and
her family's involvement with fundamentalist preacher Col. Robert
Thieme all SEEMED to make her a target.  But in two years, Marilyn
Quayle has pulled off a surprising reversal of fortune.

At a 1989 Dallas luncheon to raise money for breast-cancer research,
the normally stoic Quayle wept as she recounted the death of her
56-year-old mother from the ravaging disease.  The public display of
emotion STUNNED even her closest friends.  But many women in the
audience, also moved to tears, rushed to her side after the speech and
volunteered to help in cancer fund raising.

   The Dallas speech gave her a cause--and the foundation on which she
could build a new public personality.  Next month she'll host the
second annual Race for the Cure, a five-kilometer jog through
Washington that is EXPECTED to raise $700,000 for breast-cancer
research.  She continues to volunteer for federal disaster-relief
efforts but has also become involved in aid for the hearing impaired.

A real practice remains a problem, however.  She CONSIDERED working
for a Washington firm after the election but realized that as Second
Lady she would e perpetually vulnerable to interest-conflict
questions.
   Quayle still devotes much of her energy to her two teenage sons and
12-year-old daughter.

Joint appearances with her husband are infrequent.  While advisers are
well AWARE THAT she counsels Quayle in private, they FEAR THAT putting
Marilyn out front with the veep could throw his liabilities into even
sharper relief.  Bush staffers notice the paranoia.  "He would benefit
if the public SAW her more involved in his work and him involved in
hers.  But they are too scared," gripes a senior aide.  Perhaps Quayle
aides FEAR a reprise of 1988, when Marilyn was tagged as a
behind-the-scenes manipulator, tugging at Quayle's elbow to cut off
interviews.  

\fICuring Bush's Thyroid\fR

And oddly enough, what caused Bush's hyperthyroid activity turned out,
after several days of tests, to be the same illness that has plagued
his wife, Barbara:  Graves' disease.  It's not THOUGHT to be
contagious, and doctors said the chances that a husband and wife will
both have it are one in 10,000.
   Some doctors found it "a little odd," as a New York cardiologist
put it, that the problem hadn't been found in Bush's last physical
exam only six weeks earlier.

   About 1 million Americans suffer from Graves' disease, which isn't
life threatening when properly treated.  The underlying cause is
UNKNOWN; researchers SUSPECT that bacteria or a retrovirus may be
involved, but stress might play a part, too.  Whatever begins it, the
body's auto-immune system produces an antibody which mimics the
hormone that normally tells the thyroid gland how much to produce.

\fIMinority Against Minority\fR

For two nights in a row, angry Hispanics and blacks set fire to
vehicles, looted stores and lobbed Molotov cocktails.  To URGE
residents to remain calm, Mayor Sharon Pratt Dixon, 47, met with
community leaders during the day and stalked the roiling northwest
Washington neighborhood at night.  At one point, the tear gas became
so dense that the mayor took cover in a police bus.  But Dixon's
dangerous tour STRENGTHENED HER RESOLVE.  "I'll do whatever it takes
to put an end to [the violence]," the mayor said later--and, to mixed
reviews, she did just that.
    
   Dixon inherited a city where hair-trigger tensions between blacks
and Hispanics had been building for more than a decade.  "There is a
lot of HOSTILITY," says Enrique Diaz, cultural-programs director of
Casa del Pueblo, a community-service organization.  "Our people really
get mistreated by the police."

Impoverished and uneducated, they compete with inner-city blacks for
housing and jobs at the low end of the economic scale--a situation
made even more desperate by the current recession.  "The blacks are
JEALOUS that we are taking away their jobs," says Diaz, "and the
Hispanic community is  CONSCIOUS that we [have not] achieved political
power yet."
   By the second night, the riots that began as a protest evolved into
free-for-alls.

"It may play well with the public that we exercised restraint," says
Gary Hankin of the Washington, D.C., Fraternal Order of Police, "but
before the curfew was instated, police seemed to be largely
ineffective."  Dixon, who says, "You can never exercise too much
restraint when saving life and limb," BELIEVES her strategy was
successful:  No one (not even Gomez, now listed in stable condition)
died.

Meeting with Hispanic leaders last week, Dixon pledged a wide range of
reforms, a difficult promise for a mayor who is cutting $200 million from the
city's budget.  It will be even more difficult to lessen the
RESENTMENTS festering on both sides of the ethnic barrier.  "It's
always AMAZING that every group that's been discriminated against [can
do] the same thing towards someone else," Dixon told NEWSWEEK.

\fIFrequent Fliers in the Cabinet\fR

   To nobody's SURPRISE, George Bush finally clipped the wings of his
high-flying chief of staff last week.  From now on, John Sununu will
have strictly limited privileges on VIP military aircraft, and he'll
have to clear all such flights with the White House counsel.  But the
flap over Air Sununu has metastasized, threatening new EMBARRASSMENTS
in the Bush cabinet.  NEWSWEEK has learned that Veterans Affairs
Secretary Edward J. Derwinski and his deputy, Anthony J. Principi,
have billed the government for dozens of commercial flights to their
hometowns.

The Justice Department refused to discuss the case, and Cavazos
couldn't be found.
   The major EMBARRASSMENT, however, was still Sununu's imperial use
of Air Force planes for personal, political and dubiously official
trips.  As it turned out, he had ample cause to pinch pennies:  with
eight children, and with mortgage payments, real-estate taxes and
college bills totaling at least $90,000 a year, Sununu and his wife,
Nancy, were struggling to get by on their combined salaries of
$182,500.

All told, said a White House aide, Sununu "got off easy, but he also
got the message."  The message:  George Bush's PATIENCE has worn thin,
and Sununu has little margin for error left.


\fIFerraro Is Back-And Looking for a Miracle\fR

She and Mondale came close to political annihilation after Ronald
Reagan and George Bush finished with them in 1984.  Now she HOPES to
resurrect her career with a small miracle--beating New York's
flamboyant Sen. Alfonse D'Amato. 
   D'Amato was considered unbeatable.

But she carries some heavy baggage from 1984.  A statewide poll found
that VAGUE MEMORIES of her husband's financial improprieties still
STICK IN PEOPLE'S MINDS.  "In a race against D'Amato, the issues of
integrity will come up again," says Lee Miringoff, director of the
poll. 

\fI'No One Would Believe Her'\fR

An affidavit outlining the case against Smith also raises questions
about Kennedy's actions in the hours after the alleged attack.  Early
on the afternoon of March 31, investigators who visited the estate say
they were told by a security man, ex-FBI agent William Barry, that he
THOUGHT Kennedy was out and that Smith had left town.  But when they
telephoned an hour later, they said a housekeeper informed them that
Barry and Kennedy had accompanied Smith to the airport for a 3 p.m.
flight.

But police say the case remains open.  "You can draw your own
CONCLUSIONS," says Palm Beach Police Sgt. William Atkinson.  "There
was certainly the possibility detectives were MISLED."  Kennedy told
reporters in Cambridge, Mass., on Friday that he was never asked to
contact the police.

After driving Smith back to the Kennedy estate on North Ocean
Boulevard, she kissed him good night.  He asked if she WOULD LIKE to
tour the house and take a walk on the beach.  Her statement doesn't
directly implicate Kennedy and his son, but places them within earshot
at the time of the alleged attack.

She told police she wondered why no one responded to her screams
(Kennedy says he heard nothing that night).  Police said she also
depicted Smith as eerily composed after the alleged rape, sitting
cross-legged in a chair and telling her that "no one would BELIEVE
her."  She went outside to start her car, but said she was shaking so
badly she was unable to shift the gears.

   As the scandal moved closer to the courtroom, Kennedy operatives
tried to blunt anonymous but widespread stories that Smith had a
history of abusive behavior toward women.  One woman who KNEW Smith at
Duke University in the early 1980s told NEWSWEEK that he was "a
presser," who would corner women aggressively at parties, especially
if he had been drinking.

\fIAfter Police Brutality:  L.A.'s Identity Crisis\fR

   The topic of the day was police brutality, but the jammed
auditorium rang with wider FRUSTRATIONS.  Roland Coleman of the
Southern California Civil Rights Coalition said the city was "under
siege by occupying forces."  

Last week the blue-ribbon commission set up to study police misconduct
held its first neighborhood forum, and it carried a message that hit
home like a nightstick to the ribs:  L.A.'s agonies go far beyond the
violence of its police.  It is a city racked by chaos and SELF-DOUBT.
   Certain tragedies define a city, exposing the darkest aspects of
its character.

Last summer the murder of Utah tourist Brian Watkins in a subway
robbery reinforced New York's reputation as a city plagued by runaway
crime.  The King beating has defined Los Angeles, forcing an anguished
SELF-EXAMINATION.  "There's lots of SOUL-SEARCHING going on," says
city councilman Zev Yaroslavsky.  With the trial of four officers
accused of beating King scheduled to begin this week, the picture
emerging is uniquely L.A., but as troubling as any in the nation.

Whites, who in 1960 represented 91 percent of the population, have
become a minority (49 percent).  No group is SURE HOW it fits into
this sunbaked mosaic--so most CHOOSE to stand alone.  "It's
self-Balkanization," says Clint Rosemond, spokesman for the Southern
California Association of Governments, a regional-planning group.

\fBAngry Mood:\fR  One response to the dithering at city hall has been
resounding APATHY:  turnout for the April 9 city council elections was
a desultory 18 percent.  Another has been ANGER.  "What if the people
of South Central realize that they cannot remove Daryl Gates?" asks
Rep. Maxine Waters, who represents that mostly black district,
including Watts.  

The Japanese have cut their investment in L.A. real estate by a third
in the last year.
   Other long-term problems SEEM even more intractable.  Record rains
this spring did little to alleviate the city's water shortage.

More than 250 different gangs roam the streets.  And though the
police-to-citizen ratio is one of the lowest in the nation, the mayor
recently CONSIDERED cutting 450 officers from the force as part of a
plan to mend the city's $177 million budget deficit.  Even the once
loyal hometown film industry is taking aim.

Bradley and Gates have pleaded for the healing to begin, but talk
shows and letters to the editor still brim with vitriol.  USC's Starr
warns that to treat L.A.'s ills as isolated is to deal in a dangerous
DELUSION.  Critics of L.A. "should KNOW that Los Angeles is a massive
experiment in what the American republic will be in the 21st century,"
he says.  Right now, the future doesn't work.


INTERNATIONAL  PAGES 34-38  

\fIYour Wish Is My Demand\fR

Washington STILL HOPES for a breakthrough in the Middle East.  But
don't expect anything lasting.

   Even as they prepared to wage war for Kuwait, American policymakers
were MAKING AMBITIOUS PLANS to win the postwar peace.  With Saddam
Hussein beaten, a "window of opportunity" would open in the Middle
East.  

And the United States, its credibility and power at a record high,
would be there to broker the "new world order".  Both the Arabs and 
the Israelis dropped hints that they would be WILLING to play along.
   But even before Secretary of State James Baker embarked last week
on his fourth diplomatic tour of the region since the end of the war,
this TIDY SCENARIO HAD MOSTLY EVAPORATED.  The Middle East is
reverting to its old, intransigent, form.  From Damascus to Riyadh to
Cairo, the Arab press if filled with anti-Israel invective.  The
Israeli government of Ytzhak Shamir is UNREPENTANT about building more
settlements on the occupied West Bank.  The Arab boycott office
increased the number of companies it blacklists for dealing with
Israel.

But the growing surliness on all sides makes it questionable whether
that process can lead to lasting new agreements between Israel and the
Arabs.
  \fBHesitant allies:\fR  The behavior of the Saudis, who after all
were protected from Saddam by U.S. troops, has been FRUSTRATING to
American officials.  First, they bowed out of Baker's proposed
regional peace conference--though under pressure from Washington, they
agreed last week to allow the attendance of an "observer" from the
Gulf Cooperation Council and to sit at meetings among Israel and the
Arab states on water and other regional concerns, if it happens.
Hesitantly, they DECIDED to let the U.S. military preposition
equipment in their territory:  Saudi King Fahd told U.S. Defense
Secretary Dick Cheney that he would accept an undisclosed amount of
equipment, and stepped-up joint training and exercises.  But the
details must be kept secret out of deference to Saudi
"sensitivity"--that is, out of respect for the political price the
Saudis BELIEVE they pay at home and in the Arab world for being
associated too closely with the United States.  Meanwhile, Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak, squabbling over reconstruction contracts with
the Kuwaits, last week withdrew all 38,000 Egyptian troops from the
gulf, in what an Arab diplomat called "nearly a death blow" to
American PLANS for a post-war gulf security arrangement with broad
Arab military participation.
   Was the administration a victim of its own WISHFUL THINKING?  Bush
officials did not DELUDE THEMSELVES that the fundamental nature of the
Middle East would be transformed.  They DID EXPECT, though, that Arab
and Israeli gratitude for the American military achievement in Kuwait
would boost the administration's postwar plans.

"We should be able to ride that for a while."  Officials also ASSUMED
that Arab self-interest would cause the fledgling
Riyadh-Cairo-Damascus axis to survive the post-war period.  President
Bush and his senior advisers were ENCOURAGED TO THINK SO by their Arab
interlocutors--especially Mubarak and Saudi Arabia's smooth-talking
ambassador to Washington, Prince Banbar bin Sultan, who is probably
more pro-West than his government.
   Thus Baker rushed to the region to discuss security and the peace
process just one week after the war ended.  Though his gambit had bold
objectives, its style was oddly muted.  Bush and Baker FELT ENTITLED
to some sort of diplomatic payback from the countries of the region,
but beyond some testy gibes at Israel over the settlements they never
openly spelled out the quid pro quo to any of the key parties.
Perhaps the Arab states UNDERSTOOD IT implicitly, but the delicacy of
Bush's approach permitted them TO PRETEND that they didn't.  The gulf
war, dramatic as IT SEEMED to Americans, didn't SEEM LIKE such a
revolution to the wordly statesmen of the Middle East.  After all,
they had weathered many war--Lebanon, Iran-Iraq-in recent years.  If
Washington FELT THAT it had some debts to collect from them, they were
more INTERESTED in seeing what new goodies--arms, cash--they could
tease out of the United States administration.
   Washington's credibility was also undermined by Saddam Hussein's
survival in power.  The most disastrous bit of White House WISHFUL
THINKING was the BELIEF that Saddam's own defeated military would
topple him.  Now Saddam may be as entrenched as ever in Iraq, and his
staying power may keep the American Army bogged down in Kurdistan to
boot (page 38).  Under the circumstances, Iraq's neighbors in the gulf
BELIEVE they have to watch their backs again as Radio Baghdad returns
to its prewar invective against pro-U.S. regimes.  Though Saddam's
devastated Army can't pose an immediate threat, it was chilling to many
gulf leaders to see him strutting about, firing a pistol in the air,
at a pro-government demonstration in Baghdad last week.
   \fBReligious police:\fR  HEAVILY INFLUENCED by Mubarak and Bandar,
the administration also OVER-ESTIMATED the capacity for internal
change in the Arab states, particularly in Saudi Arabia.  The Saudi
royal family, having sat on the religious fundamentalists during the
war, apparently decided during the recently concluded holy month of
Ramadan that they had to appease their Islamic fundamentalist
constituents.  During the gulf war, the religious police known as
\fImutawa\fR were packed off to remote areas; after Iraq's defeat,
they came back to the cities and shopping malls, once again accosting
unmarried men they found talking to women, and other "immodest"
people.  "The Saudis have to be CONCERNED about their standing with
the fundamentalists at home and within the greater Islamic world,"
said a gulf ambassador.  "They can't give the impression that they are
being TOO EAGER to pay back the Americans and Europeans."
   For their part, the Egyptians are showing renewed CONCERN for their
image in the rest of the Islamic world.  In addition, they have begun
to bristle over the lack of respect and gratitude extended to them by
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait:  Egyptian officials are now signaling that
they might expel the 30,000 ultrarich Kuwaits lodged in Cairo's
five-star hotels and plush suburbs.  

"In the Arab world, pride can be more important than the cold-blooded
calculations of the West."
   Baker is a resourceful and stubborn negotiator who still BELIEVES
that the coalition victory has given him as edge.  The limited
concessions he already has pried out of Israel and the Arabs SUSTAIN
HOPE that he can put the peace process on track.  Soviet Foreign
Minister Aleksandr Bessmertnykh plumped for a regional conference on
his visit to the region last week, which included the first-ever stop
by a Soviet foreign minister in Israel.  But in truth, Baker is not
particularly welcome in either Jerusalem or the Arab capitals.  He
keeps urging the parties TO SET ASIDE WHAT HE CONSIDERS OUT-MODED
WORDS AND CONCEPTS--"autonomy" or "international conference"--but the
old disputes still have deep roots.  Even if Baker succeeds in his
new, modest objective of getting the Israelis, Egyptians, Jordanians
and Palestinians, and perhaps the Syrians, to come to a one-day
kickoff conference as a prelude to detailed bilateral and regional
sessions, there's little agreement on what those substantive talks are
designed to accomplish.

\fI'Bushistan':  At the Edge of a Quagmire?\fR

It once was home to 400,000 people, most of them Kurds.  Many of the
refugees insist they won't CONSIDER THE security zone safe until Dahuk
is part of it.  But the Iraqis refused an American request to leave.
Some officials in the Bush administration were just as glad.  They
WORRIED that providing security for Dahuk could bog down American
troops and any U.N. peacekeeping force that eventually takes charge.
But the Kurds SEEMED WILLING to settle only where Americans were
keeping the peace.  "If the allies go home, they can take me back with
them," said Ahmed Fateh of Amadiya, a town about 21 miles east of
Sirseng.
   As a result, what WAS EXPECTED to become a massive influx of Kurds
last week instead continued to be a modest stream.  The most
optimistic estimates were that 100,000 Kurds had left camps in Turkey.

Mohammad lost six members of his 13-member family, including four
children, to disease on the flight to Turkey; he was taking no chances
with the rest of them going back home.
   Saddam Hussein KNOWS what awaits him if he tangles again with
allied forces.  Iraqi gunners in Dahuk opened up on a U.S.
reconnaissance plane last week, but their commander immediately
promised it wouldn't happen again.

\fIGetting Fed Up With China\fR

Congress is in an uproar over China's record on human rights, and last
week the Bush administration pointedly warned Beijing against selling
ballistic missiles to Syria and Pakistan.  In this climate, George
Bush soon must DECIDE WHETHER to keep China on the list of
most-favored trading partners for another year.  If China shows "NO
WILLINGNESS to work with us on those kinds of issues," says a senior
administration official, "that's going to make it tough."
   The stakes go far beyond the $370 billion in direct U.S. investment
in China.

The president recently canceled sales of U.S. satellite components to
Chinese military companies--two of which make missile parts.  Last week
Bush dispatched Under Secretary of State Robert Kimmitt to Beijing to
warn China's leaders not to consummate missile deals with Syria or
Pakistan--as well as to REMIND THEM that MFN renewal would "be made in
a political context of CONCERNS ABOUT human rights, nonproliferation
and trade," as Kimmitt told reporters.  Back home, Congress is LOSING
PATIENCE.  Liberals and conservatives have teamed up behind
legislation to deny MFN.  Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat,
says it should be extended--but conditioned on "significant progress"
on human-rights abuses.  "WE WANT to use MFN for leverage," she says.
   Bush, a former ambassador to Beijing, FEELS FRUSTRATED with China's
recent performance, say close aides.  But whatever IMPATIENCE HE MAY
FEEL IS CUSHIONED BY DEEP AFFECTION for Beijing.  After the Tiananmen
crackdown he took a lot of heat for his mild sanctions-"reasoned,
careful action," as he put it--to preserve Sino-U.S. relations.  His
rebukes of China--meeting with the Dalai Lama one day, banning the
satellite sale another--have cunningly preserved the option of
extending MFN.  No one KNOWS WHETHER he'll renew if.  But aides
predict he won't abandon his old friends.

\fIIntroducing Mr. Glasnost\fR

   Eduard Shevardnadze was AMAZED to learn that he had become a
celebrity in the United States.  The former Soviet foreign minister
was the first official visitor to see George Bush after the president
got out of the hospital early last week.  

But instead of disappearing into the wilderness, Shevardnadze has
emerged as a kind of soviet Henry Kissinger--a Mr. Glasnost for the
Global talk-and-diplomacy circuit.
   Shevardnadze is driven by a SENSE OF URGENCY, a feeling that the
dangers facing the Soviet Union have deepened since he quit.  "The
social tensions are even greater now," he told NEWSWEEK, "and
economically the situation is even worse."

The other is a yet-unnamed nationwide democratic party that he and
other reformers, including Gavriil Popov, the radical mayor of Moscow,
are trying to get started.  Shevardnadze said last week that his own
resignation was INTENDED to show "that democracy requires struggle,
and it requires sacrifice."
   \fBMarket woes:\fR  The U.S. visit was INTENDED partly to raise
money for the new think tank.  For 24 days of public speaking,
Shevardnadze was being paid $100,000 plus expenses by Diomedes, Inc.,
a San Francisco firm specializing in U.S.-Soviet joint ventures.

   In a meeting with Secretary of State James Baker, Shevardnadze
insisted that the new political party will help Gorbachev.  "He
BELIEVES Gorbachev needs to have a powerful force on the left
demanding reform as a counter-weight to the right, which is demanding
retrenchment," said a Baker aide.  Gorbachev may not VIEW the new
party so benighnly.  But Shevardnadze pleaded Gorbachev's case, too.
He spoke out publicly in support of Moscow's lastest request for
emergency aid to buy American food and privately urged Bush to do all
he could to bolster the Soviet leader.  Bush, who previously EXPRESSED
DOUBTS about the food aid, last week indicated he was INCLINED to
grant the request.
   Shevardnadze thinks Gorbachev has only "a few months" in which to
stabilize the Soviet Union.  But the former Foreign minister FEELS
quite relaxed and even liberated about his own new role.  "From a
personal point of view, I FIND this life to be much more comfortable,"
he says.  "There used to be all kinds of barriers on whom I could see
and what I could say."

\fIThe Papal Hit:  Bulgaria Opens Its Files\fR

   Ten years ago this week, Pope John Paul II was shot and seriously
wounded in St. Peter's Square by Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish hit man.
Agca claimed he was hired by Bulgaria's secret service; there was
SPECULATION that the Bulgarians had acted on behalf of the Soviet
Union, which FEARED that the Polish pope was a threat to its East
European empire.  Now the empire has fallen, and Bulgarian Communists
call themselves Socialists.

Next week an American-led team of experts will leave for Sofia to
examine secret Bulgarian files on the case.
   "The IDEA is to establish a scholarly archive...so that records
cannot be destroyed," says the leader of the team, Allen Weinstein,
head of the Center for Democracy, a Washington public-policy group.
But some of the files have disappeared already, and former communist
officials are stonewalling.  Italy has launched a new investigation of
its own, and Bulgarian officials say the case is mainly Rome's
problem.  MORE HOPE IS HELD OUT FOR a parallel investigation into the
1978 murder of Bulgarian exile Georgi Markov, who was killed in London
by a poison pellet, apparently carried in the tip of an umbrella.
Bulgaria's chief investigator in that case, Leonid Katzamunsky, calls
it a "clear political act, executed most probably by our secret
police."  As for the hit on the pope, Zhelev told an Italian
interviewer:  "I am CERTAIN THAT our Communist regime was capable of
such an act."


\fIThe Plane People of Miami\fR

"Some people stay for a couple of weeks or even months, others just
don't go back," says Oscar Alvarez, an actor and former political
prisoner who arrived who arrived in Miami 18 months ago. "Sometimes I
have a SENSATION of being neither here nor there."  
   Miami itself is loosening up.

"I have talked with a Cuban official right here in this office."  Mas
WORRIES that many of the visitors may be "plants," but adds:  "It's
amazing what is going on."
   Cubans brought up on anti-Miami propaganda are AMAZED too.  "I
never REALIZED that Miami is Cuba," says painter Arturo Cuenca, a
35-year-old hero of the Havana avant-garde, who left in 1990 and moved
to Miami two months age after a year in Mexico.  Even official
defectors, who used to get the red-carpet treatment, now find a buyers
market; a third secretary from the Cuban Embassy in Moscow was reduced
to selling pizza.

   Inside the U.S. Interests Section of Havana's waterfront, hundreds
of would-be \fIvisitantes\fR sit watching cable TV movies and waiting
for their interview with a consular officer.  To the relief of U.S.
immigration officials, Cuba's own age limit for exit visas has helped
ensure that most who go are too old to be overly ATTRACTED by Miami's
bright lights once their visas expire; that is almost sure to change,
especially if, as senior Cuban officials have been hinting, the age
limit is dropped to 18.  Indeed the current wave of waterborne
refugees (who automatically get asylum) has south Florida officials
worrying about a Mariel II. 

"If I win the lottery or something, then maybe."  Some day he might
FEEL at home in Miami--knowing he can always go back to Havana.


BUSINESS   PAGES 42-45
    
\fIA Mexican Miracle?\fR

She is paid $33 a week to assemble seat belts in \fImaquiladora\fR, or
assembly plant, owned by TRW Inc.  She grimaces at what passes for a
street and says, "This thing--what's it called, free trade?--I HOPE it
means they'll pay me what they make in the United States.  I'd work
less overtime and I could come home in daylight."
   It's a modest DESIRE perhaps, but for Mexico and its reform-minded
President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, this thing called free trade
carries enormous implications.  If an agreement is worked out with the
United States, Mexicans HOPE U.S. companies will infuse $25 billion in
new capital into their depressed country by 1994, producing new jobs,
higher wages and generally elevating the country's standard of living.
For the United States, the Bush administration says that by
eliminating trade barriers U.S. companies will gain access to a huge
new market that will create thousands of jobs at home, helping pull
the country out of the recession.
   These grand visions undoubtedly contain some elements of hype (page
45), yet the proposed free-trade agreement (FTA) has WORRIED organized
labor and many environmentalists.  They have contended that Mexico's
low wages--and looser enforcement of environmental regulations--will
lure U.S. companies to move more operations there, costing jobs and
inflicting new environmental harm on Mexico. 

   \fBYanqui competition:\fR  But along with that success has come
problems that could confront all of Mexico under a free-trade
agreement.  Some Mexicans WORRY that the onslaught of American
companies will overrun their own businesses.  At Vise, Mexico's major
beer producer, free trade CONJURES UP images of looming U.S. brew
titan Anheuser-Busch, whose advertising budget alone exceeds Visa's
total annual beer sales.  "The Mexican companies that have enjoyed
state protection and continue the tradition of paying little attention
to the customer will lose," says Edmundo Escobar, while he pores over
a U.S. productivity manual on his job as a manager for a Monterrey
house-hold-cleaning-products maker.  Vitro, a local glassmaker, is
busy probing the U.S. company it bought last year to LEARN how
\fIYanqui\fR competition ticks.  "When free trade was announced last
year, everyone here immediately THOUGHT, 'Wow, I'm going to have
access to the world's largest market'," says Hector Moreira, director
of the Monterrey Technological Institute's Strategic Studies Center.
"Now with the FTA approaching reality, it has suddenly HIT HOME that
this is a two-way street."
   Or a two-way pipeline.

If its northern border is any indication, Mexico may have to suffer
through more of the 19th century in order to enter the 21st.
   San Antonio has always been VIEWED as the weak sister of the big
regional centers of Houston and Dallas.  While it could boast of a
lovely river walk, Dallas was showing off a powerful dual-hub airport
and Houston a pulsing port.  

Business ties have also been strengthened.  Southwestern Bell is key
partner in the investment group that recently purchased TelMex, with
AN EYE TOWARD upgrading Mexico's antiquated phone system.
   \fBJob loss:\fR  Amid the boosterism, San Antonians RECOGNIZE that
the marriage of First and Third World economics won't be simple.
"Some jobs initially will be lost, and that's a tough sell if you're
the guy losing the jobs," says Tom Frost, chief executive officer of
Cullen/Frost Bankers, Inc.

Says Frost, "When such jobs do go to Mexico instead of Asia, it means
more purchases of U.S. goods."
   Some Texans--San Antonians especially-BELIEVE that part of the
opposition to free trade stems from class and racial prejudices
perpetuated by negative video images.  But Texans have long developed
an extensive pattern of relationships with Mexico.

Besides paying import tariffs on its raw materials, the company must
overcome delays of hours and even days as trucks await border
clearance to enter the United States.  Ron Sands, Pace's chief
operating officer, BELIEVES a trade pact would eliminate such
problems--and even open up a market for his product in Mexico.  When
the company took 250 cases of its salsa to Mexico City to film a TV
commercial last fall, a store owner sold it all within weeks.  Facing
a tariff up to 20 percent, Pace DECIDED for now not to sell there- but
with free trade, that could change.  "It may SOUND LIKE selling oil to
the Arabs, but the evidence shows it will work."

\fITrading Places:  Who May Win-And Lose\fR

Winners  
Banking:  Mexican industry will be LOOKING TO expand; American banks
can profit if allowed.

\fIFive Myths of the Free-Trade Debate\fR

A free-trade pact would bolster his standing by drawing new investment
and ensuring that Salinas's successors could not undo his reforms.
For the United States, a trade agreement is a way to enhance the
political stability of a neighbor-and EASE the distrust that has
tainted relations for 150 years.
   \fBMyth 2:  Free trade will be a disaster for U.S. workers.\fR

Much of South America is in economic chaos.  The THOUGHT of
negotiating separate trade agreements with Paraguay, Panama and Peru
gives U.S. negotiators nightmares.

\fISplitsville:  Hollywood's Highest-Paid Team\fR

   Why the shake-up?  Some friends maintained that Peters, a free
spirit who works mostly out of his Malibu and Hollywood Hills homes,
had grown FRUSTRATED with the job's administrative demands and WANTED
to get back to movies.  "He's got his dream job now," says producer
Howard Rosenman.  But others say his Japanese bosses were
UNCOMFORTABLE with his abrasive manner and extravagant habits.  (He
spent lavishly on movies such as "Radio Flyer" and once reportedly
dispatched a corporate jet to deliver flowers to a girlfriend.)

\fIConsumer News Blues\fR

But the piece was killed.  The reason, according to reporters at KARE,
was that station management FEARED it might jeopardize advertising
from dealers.  KARE's vice president for news, Janet Mason, denies
that.  

But Mason declined to identify the holes in the story, or say why she
was not satisfied by Grace's efforts to fill them.
   Advertisers have always complained about unfavorable TV news
stories, but in the past their IRRITATION rarely affected news coverage.
In hard times, though, advertisers are WILLING TO be more insistent,
and cash-hungry TV stations have become more susceptible to threats.
The biggest victim is consumer reporting, a longtime viewer favorite.
Those stations that still feature consumer reporters--about 20 percent
compared with 40 percent a decade ago--now seem more likely to delete
names of advertisers from critical pieces, allow their own sales
department to grill reporters, or kill stories outright.  "Everyone
LOVES it if you're chopping up the city of Philadelphia but if you're
chopping up car dealers of department stores, [many stations] don't
WANT to touch it," says Herb Denenberg, a consumer reporter for
Philadelphia's WCAU-TV.
   KARE managers had some cause to be nervous.  Across Minneapolis at
WCCO-TV, respected consumer reporter Silvia Gambardella's pieces about
car buying and repairs prompted local car dealers to pull more than $1
million last year.  The station stood by her stories but in September
DECIDED not to pick up her contract.  WCCO general manager Bob McGann
did keep on to eliminate, he says, the "PERCEPTION" that WCCO had
caved in.
   Consumer reporters hear more viewer complaints about cars than any
other product.

"We vote with our dollars," says Tom Bennett of Tousley Ford in White
Bear Lake, Minn., as advertiser offended by a Gambardella piece that
tracked one of his customers through the state's lemon-law grievance
system.  "If I'm out trying to tell a good story about what I'm doing
and paying $3,000 for 30 seconds, and someone's calling me names, I'm
not going to be HAPPY."
   Advertisers often complain that consumer reporters "crusade"
unfairly or hype petty gripes by customers into major offenses.  And
some reporting is geared more toward boosting ratings than ending
fraud or product hazards.  But advertisers are often SPOOKED by the
most innocuous attacks.  A California car dealer pulled ads from
KCRA-TV in Sacramento simply because the station reported a survey
showing that Chicago car dealers reaped higher profits from black
and women car buyers.
   Station responses to IRRITATED advertisers range from courageous to
panic stricken to amused.  A woman saying she represented
Jack-in-the-Box warned KCRA that the company would pull advertising if
the station aired a story about a Phoenix employee who had blown his
nose on a sandwich sold to a police officer.

This fall KGET-TV in Bakersfield, Calif., ran a story about a
customer's troubles with a waterbed store.  But editors BELIEVED the
consumer bore some of the blame so deleted the name of the company,
which has been an advertiser Another waterbed store later complained
that the anonymous approach tarred good stores along with bed.
   Most disturbing, consumer reporters have begun quietly but severely
censoring themselves.

"I won't do the car-repair story, or the lemon story or the story
about a misrepresentation in the sale of a car," says a veteran
Midwestern consumer reporter.  "I don't WANT to get into how you can
better negotiate for a car.  It's not worth the hassle."  Herb
Weisbaum of KIRO-TV in Seattle wrote this fall in the Investigative
Reporters and Editors Journal that "I can't do my job the way I WANT
to anymore," adding that enterprise stories are frowned upon and "we
don't even bother with most auto-related stories anymore."  Weisbaum
says his news director, John Lippman, would not allow him to be
interviewed.

But it is precisely because so many people get their consumer news
from TV that independence from ad pressure remains so important.
Stations that buckle under once may ENCOURAGE other advertisers to try
boycotts.  If that happens, either the station's revenues-or its
integrity-will end up suffering.


PAGE 49  \fIWho Cleans Up the Waste?\fR

New York's Environmental Conservation Department found radioactive
thorium sludge on part of the property and listed it as a hazardous
site.  The sludge in not CONSIDERED a health threat.  Still, banks
won't make loans there, so the businesses can't sell, refinance or
expand.
   \fBBad stuff:\fR  When it comes to owning a home or investing in
real estate, no one SEEMS to be safe from the costly drive to
eliminate hazardous wastes.  Almost any homeowner might turn on the
tap and find the water stinking of chemicals or of oil from a nearby
spill.
   These DISCOVERIES are knocking billion of dollars off property
values.  The newsletter Real Estate Investor's Monthly proposes that
Parker Brothers add the following card to its famous Monopoly game:
"Toxics Found.  Declare bankruptcy.  Do not pass go.  Do not collect
$200." 
   Bankers who make commercial loans are VIVIDLY AWARE of the threat.
Many won't finance business properties until they've conducted an
"environmental audit" to see if the real estate is clean.

If toxics are found, the property's value is reduced.
   Small businesses that use or produce toxic substances are FINDING
it tough to get any credit at all--among them, gas stations, scrap
yards, dry cleaners, paint stores and printers.  Bankers are TERRIFIED
of the liability.  If such businesses fail, and the lender forecloses,
the lender might inherit the clean-up.

Their value will drop to little or nothing until somebody cleans them
up.
   If, at this point, you are not SCARED STIFF about owning a piece of
real estate, this column isn't doing its job.  The last to hear about
these new environmental risks are small investors and homeowners who
might easily blunder into a property that could cost them all they
have.

You'll have to sue the polluter to recover its value--that is, if the
villain can be found and has the money to pay.
   When you buy land strictly for business or investment purposes, the
lender will usually WANT a full-dress environmental audit.  But so
far, banks have gone easier on single-family homes. 

They charge around $1,500 to $3,000 to check for such problems as
asbestos, radon, lead and hazardous wastes.  \fIThe audit is worth
it!\fR  If you overlook a contaminant, the next buyer might not--and
you could FIND it hard to sell.  If toxics are discovered, get an
estimate of the cleanup cost and negotiate with the seller for a lower
price.

NEWSMAKERS  PAGE 51

\fIShe Applied Herself\fR 

   Marianne (Angel) Ragins didn't WANT to work her way through
college, so she went looking for a scholarship--aggressively.  Now the
talented Macon, Ga., senior is choosing from a whooping $300,000 in
scholarships from 20 colleges, businesses and foundations (that's just
about everything she applied for).

\fITRANSITION\fR

The soft light fell upon an angular old man leaning into a black
concert grand.  He was playing Beethoven, singing the ideas to himself
before an audience sitting MESMERIZED in wooden pews.  That was
\fBRudolf Serkin.\fR  

   In his bottle glasses, his brow furrowed but his face astonishingly
youthful, Serkin inspired a fondness that bordered on reverence.
Unlike some of his more pyrotechnic contemporaries, he THOUGHT the
music was as sacred as the piano.  The classicist in him restrained
the romantic.

THE ARTS  PAGE 52-57

\fIA Matter of Influence\fR

   A casual reader, glancing through Clark Clifford's memoirs, might
THINK the subject served as a high government official throughout the
entire cold-war era.  Clifford's White House pass never expired, at
least during the days when the Democrats still owned the executive
branch.

But that is not the book that Clifford chose to write.
   Clifford's political acumen has long been RECOGNIZED.  As a young
White House aide, he was a principal architect of the greatest upset
in political history, Truman's triumph over Thomas E. Dewey in 1948.
(The Gridiron Club, Washington's journalist in crowd, staged a skit of
President Truman as a dummy, sitting on the lap of a ventriloquist
made up to look like Clifford.)

In 1965, as Lyndon Johnson weighed the fatal decision to escalate,
Clifford warned that Vietnam would be a "quagmire."  Although Johnson
IGNORED his advice, for the next two years Clifford loyally supported
the war effort.  But in 1968, when LBJ made him secretary of defense,
Clifford turned dove with a passion.

Clifford opens a brief, nine-page account of his legal practice by
repeating the speech he gave to one of his first clients, the
reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes.  "I do not CONSIDER that this
form will have any influence of any kind here in Washington..."
Clifford intoned.  "If you WANT influence, you should CONSIDER going
elsewhere."  He delivered that little talk to so many clients over the
years his law associates could recite it with him.
   Clients must have had trouble suppressing smiles.  Certainly,
Clifford established a reputation as a man who could fix most any
problem with the federal government.  It would be interesting to KNOW,
for instance, how Clifford managed to save the du Pont family up to
$100 million in taxes in the early '60s when they were forced to sell
their holdings in General Motors.  According to Joseph Goulden's "The
Super-lawyers," Clifford helped engineer a special tax bill through
Congress--yet never registered as a lobbyist.

   When Clifford left the White House in 1950, the influence game was
even sleazier than it is today.  He CONSCIOUSLY set out to be
different from wheeler-dealers like Thomas (Tommy the Cork) Corcoran,
who was so brazen that he lobbied Supreme Court justices in their
chambers.  Clifford carefully nursed a reputation for integrity and
detachment--not only because he \fIwas\fR ethical, but also because he
was shrewd.

   His memoirs offer no clue.  All autobiographies present a selective
view of their subjects, and Clifford can hardly be EXPECTED to indict
himself.  He can argue that the matter of his clients were of far less
import than, say, the 1948 election or the Vietnam War.

\fIA Washington Plutocrat Under Fire\fR

   After 53 years as a lawyer and an adviser to presidents from Truman
to Carter, Clark Clifford in 1982 took the job as chairman of First
American Bankshares because it presented "a rather exciting
opportunity."  More so, it turns out, than he could have IMAGINED.  In
the past few months he has been investigated by the Justice Department
and a New York grand jury, accused in the press of lying to federal
banking regulators, and EMBARRASSED by a Federal Reserve Board
directive suggesting that a drug-corrupt foreign bank had gained
control of his bank.
   Clifford's troubles stem from statements he made at a meeting at
the Fed in 1981.  Regulators had been uneasy about approving purchase
of a U.S. bank by a group of Arab investors who were suspected of
being fronts for the reputedly sleazy Bank of Credit and Commerce
International (BCCI).  Clifford, who arranged the meeting and whose
law firm represented BCCI, PERSUADED regulators that BCCI would have
no financial control over the new bank.  The bank was renamed First
American, and Clifford was named its chairman.

Indignant, Clifford claimed he had been duped.
   When The Washington Post revealed last week that Clifford
personally pocketed millions from the BCCI connection, his protests
seemed less CREDIBLE still.  BCCI loaned Clifford $12.2 million in
1986-87 so he could buy more than 5,400 shares of First American.  

"You and I can't get that kind of loan," says a former New York
superintendent of banking.  Moreover, the revelations cast further
DOUBT on Clifford's insistence that he had NO IDEA of the relationship
between his client, BCCI, and the bank he operated.  Federal and New
York state criminal investigators continued to probe that link.

\fIAll's Well That End's Well\fR

   Nicol Williamson really KNOWS how to get into a part.  As the ghost
of the legendary actor John Barrymore in the new Broadway comedy "I
Hate Hamlet"," he's perfectly cast:  he's a brilliant actor, he's
mercurial and he once had a reputation as a world-class carouser.

Actually, he doesn't coach so much as goad.  So no one in the
audience was SURPRISED one night, a fortnight ago, to hear Barrymore
suddenly bark at his protege, "Put some life into it! Use your head!"
And later in the same act, when the ghost engaged the inept TV star in
a sword fight, no one THOUGHT anything was amiss when Barrymore
whacked the young actor on the rear.  Until that is, the young actor (Evan
Handler) \fIplaying\fR the young actor stalked offstage.

Of course, the Barrymore character, who keeps drinking from a
champagne bottle, is played as a drunk.
   Producer James Freyberg THINKS the missed parries and final blow of
the fateful sword fight were "perfectly innocent."  Though he told
Handler to walk off if he ever felt in danger, Freyberg thinks the
injury was to Handler's pride.  OTHERS involved in the show talk about
the "complicated" Scottish star and tensions that go back to the early
days of previews.  Says Adam Arkin, who was nominated for a Tony award
for his role as a crass TV producer, "At our worst, we were a pretty
dysfunctional little family."

In an interview in The New York Times, he complained that the play
could have been much better if only the producers had listened to him.
He also DECIDED he didn't like being onstage, as directed, when
Barrymore has no lines.  So he simply exits.

\fIThe Return of Good Girls\fR

Wilson Phillips, a dauntingly wholesome trio comprised of the
daughters of less-than-wholesome pop fathers Brian Wilson and Papa
John Phillips, have ben near the top of the charts for almost a year,
singing sweetly about relationships and other proprieties.  (When the
three sing, on a recent No. 1 hit, "I want to be impulsive," only a
mother superior WOULD WORRY THAT they might actually do it.)  And
Gloria Estefan, whose 1990 bus accident rendered her not only good but
darn near a saint, has become so popular she doesn't even bother
crediting the Miami Sound Machine of her album titles anymore.

While the trio, not being sufficiently liquid of hip of moist of lip,
thus escaped pop's Sodom and Gomorrah, former cheerleader Paula Abdul
headed straight for the esthetic gutter her corporate benefactors
picked out for her.  "It was a very CONSCIOUS DECISION on my first
project to incorporate dance music," said ABdul, who often SEEMS LIKE
a good girl in bad girl's bustiers.  After selling 12 million albums
as a pop tart, Abdul is now working of her good-girl credentials.


LIFESTYLE PAGES 58-63

\fIKing Lear's Comeback\fR

Most of the candidates are former TV luminaries who've never been
required to read for a role, and their embarrassment shows.  Sensing
their discomfort, he accords each performer--no matter how
atrocious--his most enraptured ATTENTION, then ushers them out with
the same gracious farewell:  "That was wonderful, just great.  Thank
you for coming in."

But the most salubrious timing belongs to the show's creator.  Never
in memory have the networks HUNGERED MORE desperately for a hit.  Not
only does Lear make big ones, he makes them by taking even bigger
risks.

Just as Archie Bunker was inspired by his inventor's irascible father
and Maude Findlay by his acerbic second wife, this sitcom's lead
character embodies--it was only a matter of time--Lear himself.  Ben
Benedict is a mid-fiftyish patriarch who becomes engaged to a
30-year-old lawyer (Lear, now 68, is married to a woman 25 years his
junior) and quickly DISCOVERS THAT his three grown children DISAPPROVE
(Lear's own three children were also unenthusiastic about his
May-December match.)
   \fBCosmic quest:\fR  Now for the tie that really binds.  Ben's
fiancee HARBORS an intense spiritual bent, which only sharpens the
HOSTILITY of his two daughters, son and grandchild--respectively, a
devout atheist, a New Age faddist, a grasping materialist and an
apprentice agnostic.  Guess what?  Lear, too, has embarked on an
intense spiritual quest.  It's a FASCINATION he not only shares with
his third wife, a psychologist whose doctoral dissertation examined
spiritual issues, but one he's DETERMINED to promulgate via
television.  "After so many years of moving in a totally secular
direction, there's a hunger in America resulting from our neglect of
the spirit," says Lear, who researched "Sunday Dinner" by consulting
dozens of religious scholars.  "That will be the subject of this
decade and the subtext of this series.  I'm having a ball talking
about it and LEARNING about it."
   Of course, spiritual awakenings don't necessarily equate with
professional success:  just check out Darryl Strawberry's
post-born-again stats.  

This sort of thing invariabily draws droll barbs from the cynics in
her vicinity.  They include her worshipful fiance (Robert Loggia),
who, like Lear, is initally SKEPTICAL of the spiritual but comes to
SEE THE LIGHT.  "Why don't you talk to Martians the way normal people
do?" he cracks.

Even Lear himself seems to agree.  "I'm VERY PROUD of what it is," he
says of the show.  "It just isn't what it can be if it's allowed to
grow."

The Lears live lavishly, collecting high-priced art and, a few months
ago, moving into a $15 million mansion set on 10 acres.  He claims to
SEE no conflict between any of that and his frequent (and public)
condemnations of materialism.  "There's nothing in anything I say," he
told the Los Angeles Times, "that would suggest a portion of my
hard-won [earnings] can't be used to pleasure myself."

That's also how Lear got to be king of television.  Yet virtually no
one in the medium has displayed a more DARING WILLINGNESS to set off
in new directions.  If he has indeed made a mistake this time, he's
certainly earned the right-along with yet another rating of PG (for
Plenty of Guts).

SPORTS  \fIHold That Helmet Cam!\fR

There are other innovations, too, such as a 35-second time limit
between plays, to keep things moving.  Yet what this all adds up to, in
America anyway, is something that LOOKS SUSPICIOUSLY like the USFL,
the last league that tried and failed to take root in the spring, a
time when sports fans traditionally TURN THEIR ATTENTION to baseball,
as well as basketball and hockey playoffs.  Seven weeks into the
season, the six U.S. teams average an anemic 19,266 spectators per
game, and Sunday telecasts on ABC draw ratings of about 2.1, as
compared to about 13.5 for an NFL broadcast.  Almost no one, it SEEMS
safe to say, has their chips and dip all ready for World Bowl Sunday,
on June 9.  But say fish and chips and the outlook is suddenly
brighter.

The two other Old World franchises, the Barcelona Dragons and the
Frankfurt Galaxy, have also been beating their U.S. counterparts at
the box office, with average attendances of 30,529 and 23,167
respectively.  This shouldn't be SURPRISING.  The NFL has been playing
exhibition games in Europe, Canada and japan over the last few years,
LOOKING to deepen and expand its market, with some success.  Of
course that doesn't explain why the Montreal Machine has been pulling
in 38,608 customers in a city that could not support the Canadian
Football League.

The European teams have also helped their cause by winning more than
the other teams in the league.  That is largely an accident, since at
the time the WLAF held its complicated draft in February, team
officials had scant KNOWLEDGE of whom they were selecting.  (When the
smoke cleared, there were two Soviet players on the Raliegh-Durham
Skyhawks, a defensive lineman and a linebacker.)  The Europeans teams
SEEM to have would up with especially hardy stock, since their players
are winning despite 12,000-mile road trips, and in the case of the
Monarchs, British food.  Almost every American on the team lost weight
early on, and defensive tackle John Shannon dipped from 330 to 290.
"With all the corn, peas and green beans mixed into everything, it
LOOKS to us like they're trying to get rid of leftovers," says
Shannon.  An American chef has since been imported to provide Cajun
dishes and barbecued chicken for the Monarchs' training table.
   \fBRoyal scrimmage:\fR  Europeans seem just as HUNGRY FOR A TASTE
of American culture.  At Wembley, the Monarchs, who are owned by
English showbiz agent Jon Smith, provide the kind of glitzy spectacle
one might find at the Orange Bowl.  

"Here it's 'American football'"--a phrase that has come to connote a
certain high-tech glamour.
   Even as ABC is WONDERING whether it wants to renew its ten-year,
$24 million TV contract with the WLAF (the USA cable network has a
four-year $24 million contract), there is SPECULATION about expansion.
Such growth would not take place in just the United States, where,
after all, the San Antonio Riders average only 13,508, but also in
Paris, Helsinki or Tokyo.  As WLAF officials have already LEARNED,
there are plenty of opportunities out there, providing their helmet
cams are pointed in the right direction.

MEDICINE  \fIIn No Time, Back On All Four Feet\fR

As in human medicine, much of the inflation is due to sophisticated
equipment, which many veterinarians buy secondhand from hospitals.
It's not as strange as IT SOUNDS.  "All this technology actually was
developed on animals," says veterinarian D.J. Krahwinkel of the
University of Tennessee. "Now it's spilling back into veterinary
care."
   The advent of high-tech pet medicine underscores a deep change in
the way people REGARD their animals.  Over the last decade many young
couples have postponed child rearing, and the elderly have adopted
pets in increasing numbers for companionship.

"I've had her since I was 12, and she's been a big part of my life.  I
have family members who are APPALLED by it all, but these don't SEEM
to me extraordinary things to do for her."
   How much \fIis\fR too much?

"I had more invested in those two dogs and a horse than in all my
three kids, as far as medical bills go," says McCoy.  "But you don't
even THINK about it.  You just WANT to keep them alive."
   \fBOdd priorities:\fR  The possibilities afforded by high-tech pet
care and its costs create difficult ethical questions.  Some
physicians WONDER if there isn't something amiss with a society that
spends thousands of dollars on animals when many people in desperate
need of medical care can't afford it.  Dr. Kritstick disagrees:
"There will always be people who don't have what they should have," he
says.  "Whether a dog or cat is saved won't help those people."  And
while veterinarians are relieved that they no longer have to euthanize
sick pets, many are DISCOVERING that clients often don't have the
time, money or patience to see animals through a long illness.
   When that happens, there are no simple solutions.

"That's become a very, very tricky issue for vets."  Some vets resolve
it by offering extended payment plans; others do what the owner WISHES
or ask him to take the animal elsewhere.
   For Rhonda, at least, those issues are settled.

\fIFor Pets, a Piece of the Rock\fR

Together, both companies cover 100,000 animals nationwide, only a tiny
fraction of the total.  Now, veterinarians WANT that to change.
   "Insurance is absolutely essential to the progress of high-tech
care," says Dr. Jim Wilson, an adjunct professor at the University of
Pennsylvania's veterinary teaching hospital.  

The second policy, which has a $99 annual premium, covers 70 percent
of vet bills to a limit of $1,000, after a $50 deductible.  AHIA
flatly REFUSES to insure animals 10 years or older against illnesses;
VPI CONSIDERS them on a case-by-case basis.

TRENDS  \fIFighting the Pack Mentality\fR

There are times of turmoil for the Boy Scouts of America, as the
unwelcome forces of liberalization let loose in the 1970s are knocking
at the door with growing insistence.  Michael and William Randall,
9-year-old twins from Anaheim Hills, Calif., who were asked to leave
their Cub Scout pack earlier this year for REFUSING to invoke God in
their oath ("I, [name], promise to do my best to do my duty to God and
my country..."), are suing to win reinstatement.  Just last week a
U.S. district court in Chicago set a trial date for a suit by
8-year-old Mark Welsh, who is SEEKING TO set aside the requirement for
a "declaration of religious principle" from Scout families.  "I was in
Scouts for seven years and it NEVER ENTERED MY MIND that they could
exclude people," said Welsh's father, Elliot, who in 1970 himself
fought to the Supreme Court for the right to call himself a
nonreligious conscientious objector.  (He won.)  "Scouts TAUGHT me
about tolerance in the first place."
   \fBGay Eagle:\fR  Predictably, the American Civil Liberties Union
is in the forefront of the assault on the Scouts' right to set their
own standards of admission.

Homosexuals, he says, are "frankly not the traditional male role model
we are looking for."  With respect to admitting girls, Donald York, a
regional Scout executive based in Reno, Nev., points out that "most
psychologists tell us that boys of scouting age (6 to 13) PREFER TO
associate with other boys."  And as for boys who do NOT BELIEVE in
God, or America, or any of the other values enshrined in the Scouts'
credo, Lewis observes that "if you start allowing people to choose the
rules they WANT to obey, you start becoming a faceless, valueless
organization."  Which suggests that the real issue is what the Boy
Scouts really are: uniformed forces for moral uplift, or, as the
Randall twins' father, James, puts it:  "This fun organization where
you went camping and had a good time."

PAGE 64-65 SOCIETY

\fIOn the Wings of Icarus\fB

Some policies to reduce emissions, such as making buildings, machines
and cars more energy efficient, might even bring a net dollar benefit.
Yet quite a few people, including many officials in the Bush
administration, don't BELIEVE that.  They equate conservation not with
efficiency  but with sacrifice and limits to growth.

Cost:  up to $99 per ton of CO2 offset.  But this scheme, says the NRC
panel, doesn't deserve further study:  no one KNOWS how so many huge
mirrors would be launched or maintained.  Since they would dwarf the
space shuttle, they would have to be ferried into orbit in pieces and
assembled by space-walking astronauts.

   Even environmentalists have trouble dismissing geoengineering outright.
Says Stephen Schneider, a climatologist at the National Center for
Atmospheric Research and one of the most forceful advocates for
reducing greenhouse emmissions:  "I cannot in GOOD CONSCIENCE oppose
studies to find out what is possible and what is not."  He endorsed
the NRC panel's call for geoengineering research (which he says has
brought him "a lot of heat from environmentalists") because worst-case
predictions about the greenhouse effect might come true.

Despite pervasive use of pesticides, for instance, more crops than
ever are lost to fungus and insects, and the chemicals pollute ground
water and leave residues on produce.  No one KNOWS the ecological
effects of a constant veil of stratospheric dust, or of broken CFCs
raining out of the sky.  If sulfur droplets were the sun-light bouncers
of choice, for instance, "There would be no more blue sky, and God
knows what it would do to stratospheric chemistry," says geophysicist
Wallace Broecker of Lamont Doherty Geological Observatory in
Palisades, N.Y.  

"We'd be hooked on it," says Broecker.  That's because geoengineering
could well induce a COMPLACENCY about the root causes of the
greenhouse effect and ozone depletion:  with shiny balloons reflecting
away sunshine, there would be little incentive to control CO2.  
   Trying to manage climate could also bring sticky political
problems.

The history of weather modification--one big step down from climate
control--offers little reason for optimism.  Whether seeding clouds
above the Ho Chi Minh Trail during the Vietnam War or above the
parched fields South Dakota in the 1970s, would-be rainmakers have
never proved that they can produce showers when, where and in the
quantity they WANT.  Geoengineering schemes might work \fItoo\fR well:
our KNOWLEDGE of climate is too imperfect to KNOW precisely how many
dust-filled balloons to loft or how many dirty 747s to fly to counter
the oil and coal we burn.  A few too many balloons, or a dust cloud a
little too thick, and the geoengineers might push the planet into a
deep freeze.
   NRC panelists who endorse more study of geoengineering nonetheless
insist that the real answer is to not release pollutants in the first
place.  "We got into this mess by changing the planetary metabolism in
ways we didn't UNDERSTAND or INTEND,"  says Jessica Tuchman Mathews of
World Resources Institute.  "Technological fixes can turn around and
bite you."  That's a lesson that Americans who BELIEVE in the magic
wand of technology have trouble LEARNING.

PAGE 67-68  LIFESTYLE

\fIThe Profits of Reading\fR

Gateway's president, John Shanahan, describes himself as a musician,
not a professional educator.  He says he DECIDED to use music to make
reading easier to learn and then hired graduate students in a variety
of fields to choose word sounds for the music.  During the three years
it took to develop his system, Shanahan claims he did extensive
research on phonics, a widely used method of teaching reading that
emphasizes the relationship between letters and sounds.

Children and adults come to reading instruction with very different
backgrounds and need to be taught differently.  Adults likely to feel
far more FRUSTRATED and may have to overcome bad habits.  With Hooked
on Phonics, the student doesn't get appropriate feedback or
correction, Osborn says.

"I'd be willing to take a control group of 20 people and teach them
with Hooked on Phonics and they can take 20 people and teach them any
way they want," he says.  Responds Braun:  "I'm NOT INTERESTED in what
happens in 30 days.  I'M INTERESTED in what happens  in a year, two
years, 10 years."
   With so much recent publicity about illiteracy and school reading
problems, quick fixes like Hooked on Phonics are tempting.

JUSTICE

\fIThey WANT Their MTV Back\fR

Lacy brassieres, long slender legs, nymphomaniacal women--these are
the products being peddled.  As a professor of communications at the
University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Jhally WANTED to share his
perspective with students.  But he couldn't very well stand before a
class and just put into words what he saw on the tube.  "To have a
effective discussion," Jhally says, "you've really got to see them."
   

Jhally decided to delete the popular tunes and add more somber music.
Students still MISSED THE POINT.  Finally, he inserted his own
perceptive narration that made his criticism explicit.  

It ends graphically with a juxtaposition of the rape scene from the
movie "The Accused," with snippets from Sam Kinison and Motley Crue
videos.  When Jhally finally perfected his tape last fall, he DECIDED
to share it with other teachers.  He distributed 3,000 brochures,
which offered "Dreamworlds" for $100 to institutions and $50 to
individuals.  

Could ABC News order a public-affairs professor not to show excerpts
of controversial "Nightline" installments?  Could Newsweek enjoin a
media critic from reprinting portions of five articles or
advertisements in this magazine that he BELIEVED were poorly written
or in bad taste?
   To MTV, the case is a simple matter of somebody pilfering its
material.  But MTV won't explain its reasons beyond its commercial
interests.  In Jhally's view, however, the network is SEEKING to wield
its copyright to preclude him from using any music videos for any
reason.  To Jhally, that smacks of intellectual suppression.

He writes books on advertising, but his publisher, he says, won't
allow him to reprint particular ads unless he gets permission of the
advertiser holding the copyright.  Companies like Calvin Klein and
Philip Morris have turned him down every time he's told them his
PURPOSE.  Those times, the companies didn't even have to threaten
legal action before his publisher got scared.

"If I bow to this, then I'm giving away one of the things a university
is about--talking about ideas."  And one of those IDEAS--incisive
media criticism that decodes exploitation and commercialism in
American culture--just won't be possible.