Clinton Administration

WASHINGTON -- President Bill Clinton will be remembered by history for only one thing, which is a bit of a shame since his record is so thoroughly shabby and dishonorable that it deserves closer study. Mr. Clinton's contribution to our vulnerability to terror has been well documented, and now comes news that another of his foreign policies has come to fruition. The North Koreans have admitted what close observers have suspected all along -- that they have a nuclear weapons program and may have already produced a number of bombs.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has decided to renounce formally any involvement in a treaty creating an international criminal court and is expected to declare that the signing of the document by the Clinton administration is no longer valid, government officials said yesterday. The "unsigning" of the treaty, which is expected to be announced tomorrow, will be a decisive rejection by the Bush White House of the concept of a permanent tribunal designed to prosecute people in genocide, crimes against humanity and other war crimes.

KENNETH STARR'S greatest disservice to his nation was to discredit the office of independent counsel, or special prosecutor. Even allies in his vendetta against President Clinton let the legal underpinning of that institution lapse. Now is when we need it, for the Enron scandal -- though it is too early to say which Enron scandal. The integrity of company pension plans, the provision of information to the investment and lending communities, auditing, corporate influence on government policy, the possibility of bought protection (which has not been shown to date)

Inside the White House situation room on the morning terrorism transformed America, Frank Miller, the director for military affairs, was suddenly gripped by a staggering fear: "The White House could be hit. We could be going down." The reports and rumors came in a torrent: A car bomb had exploded at the State Department. The Mall was in flames. The Pentagon had been destroyed. Planes were bearing down on the capital. The White House was evacuated, leaving the national security team alone, trying to control a nation suddenly under siege and wondering whether it was next.

ST. MARC, Haiti -- Rodrigue Mortel rose from his peasant beginnings to get an education, thanks largely to the determination of his mother, and went on to a distinguished medical career in the United States. He didn't turn his back on his native land. Last month, a school he built for the poor of St. Marc, the city where he was born, opened with 63 kindergartners. Gerard Dormevil grew up in a mountainside village 2 1/2 hours north of St. Marc, one of eight children of a peasant farmer.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration reversed an 11th-hour Clinton administration ruling on mining policy yesterday, making it easier for companies to mine for gold, copper, zinc and lead on public lands. It also issued a legal opinion that could clear the way for a Nevada company to dig an open-pit gold mine in a part of the California desert considered sacred by a local American Indian tribe. Officials of the Bureau of Land Management said they were removing unduly burdensome provisions of the mining regulations.

LOS ANGELES - When Republicans laid siege to the Clinton administration, piling one investigation atop another, few defenders were as staunch as Rep. Henry A. Waxman. He decried the pursuit as blind partisanship, a way for the GOP "to get even for Watergate." But now that the proverbial shoe has switched feet, the Democrat from the west side of Los Angeles has assumed a new role, rather like that of his old nemeses. On issues from ethics to the environment, Waxman has emerged as one of the leading antagonists of President Bush and his underlings.

PRESSURES on the Federal Reserve Board go far beyond U.S. borders. It responded yesterday with a seventh reduction of interest rates this year, and a signal of more in October if economic weakness remains a greater danger than inflation. A few years ago, the Clinton administration was bombarding Japan with advice to stimulate its economy, reduce savings and increase spending by Japanese consumers. The prosperity of Southeast Asia depended on it. Of course, European and Japanese leaders were offering advice to Washington, too. Mostly to end the federal budget deficits.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - So many members of the Century Village Democratic Club here turned out to see Janet Reno last week that the organizers had to scramble to find more chairs just as she began speaking. "We've never run out of chairs before," marveled Sam Oser, the genial vice president of the Democratic club at the sprawling retirement community. The overflow crowd of seniors was another milestone in Reno's unlikely evolution from Bill Clinton's lightning-rod attorney general into the potential front-runner for the Democratic nomination to oppose Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's re-election bid next year.

WASHINGTON - Don't believe all the tough talk. The recent opening of simultaneous "consultations" in Moscow between the United States and Russia on nuclear cutbacks and missile defense is the latest sign the Bush administration prefers engaging Russia on nuclear issues rather than going it alone. Until now, the administration said negotiating reductions with Moscow, which was cutting its forces anyway, was unnecessary, and administration officials had questioned the need for a binding agreement to overhaul or replace the 1972 ABM treaty.