Manchester (Part II)
Bartlet plans to announce in his home state of New Hampshire that he is running for re-election, while marital problems loom. Josh tries to move the announcement that the Food and Drug Administration has approved RU-486 for use (1), after getting more funding for the federal tobacco litigation instead of saving the issue for political points later. Upset that he cannot run a re-election campaign on issues as he wanted to, Toby argues with new campaign staff about whether Bartlet should apologize for not revealing his multiple sclerosis earlier and on the speech's precise wording. In flashbacks, Bartlet deals with the Haiti situation (2), but gives up the military option after CJ inadvertently says that Bartlet is "relived to be focusing on something that matters." Bartlet and Leo hire new campaign staff, including Bruno Gianelli, who wants but does not get direct access to the president.
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RU-486 (last updated October 31, 2001) (back to top)
RU-486, which is known by the scientific name mifepristone, or mifeprex, is a drug that causes the termination of early pregnancy, defined as 49 days or less, counting from the beginning of the last menstrual period. As the first federally approved drug to terminate abortions, mifepristone has been a symbol of the abortion battle of the late 1980s and the 1990s.
Mifepristone was developed in the 1980s by the French pharmaceutical company Roussel Uclaf. The drug blocks a hormone that is needed for a pregnancy to continue, and, when followed by another medicine, misoprostol, it ends the pregnancy. The two drugs together are about 92-95 percent effective and are administered in several visits over a two-week period.
The French Ministry of Health approved Mifeprex in 1988, but the company voluntarily decided to suspend the marketing of the drug in response to protests by anti-abortion groups until the French minister of health ordered the drug back on the market days later. It was also approved that year for sale in China, and in 1991 for Great Britain and Sweden.
Mifepristone has had a much more tortured history in the United States. In 1989, the Food and Drug Administration banned importation of RU-486 for personal use; the ban was tested in 1992, but the Supreme Court refused to hear the case or end the ban. In 1993, the Clinton administration began reviewing ways to test, license and manufacture RU-486. In 1994, Roussel Uclaf donated the United States rights for mifepristone to the Population Council, a nonprofit research institution; it had originally decided a year earlier simply to license the rights. Clinical trials were conducted in the late 1980s until 1995, and the Food and Drug Administration began seeing the drug through its approval process.
On July 19, 1996 the FDA Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs recommended approval of mifepristone, and in September 1996, the FDA issued a conditional approval letter indicating that the drug was safe and effective but that more information was needed before final approval could be granted.
Generally, drugs reaching this stage will receive such final approval within weeks and the market shortly thereafter. Mifepristone, on the other hand, was delayed for years due to a series of legal and business disputes between the Population Council and the companies that were to manufacture, market and distribute the drug.
In the meantime, Roussel Uclef decided to end production of the drug in part due to moral questions about abortion, and transferred the rights to the drug to a former chief executive who was to start a new company for production in European countries. In addition, the House of Representatives voted 223-220 in June 1998 to block the FDA from approving RU-486, a measure that was folded into a House agriculture bill and that proved ultimately ineffective without a parallel Senate provision.
Finally, on September 28, 2000, with the legal and business problems worked out, the Food and Drug Administration announced that mifepristone was approved for marketing in the United States. The drug is distributed by Danco Laboratories of New York City, a company formed in 1999 specifically for that purpose; the actual manufacturer has not been disclosed. The announcement led off every national television news broadcast that night, and was the lead article in the New York Times the next day (previous developments with the FDA in 1996 had also been front-page news in the Times).
According to Danco Laboratories, sales information from the first year of FDA-approved sales indicates that non-profit clinics represent 70 percent of Mifeprex sales, with private practices and independent clinics making up the rest, and that doctors in 45 out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia offer Mifeprex to their patients.
Despite some discussions about overturning the FDA decision during the 2000 presidential campaign, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson announced in April 2001 that there were no plans to review the approval of Mifeprex. HHS announced in March 2001 that Medicaid at the federal level would only cover Mifeprex in rare circumstances such as a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest, or when a woman's life is in danger, which is the same restrictions applying to surgical abortions.
For more on abortion, go here.
Sources: Danco Laboratories' website on Mifepristone is available here. The Population Council's website is available here, with a chronology of the development of Mifespristone here. Lawrence Lader, A Private Matter: RU 486 and the Abortion Crisis (Prometheus Books, 1995). John Sullivan, Another delay in store for French abortion pill on U.S. market, New York Times, June 13, 1997. Tamar Lewin, Lawsuits' settlement brings new hope for abortion pill, New York Times, November 13, 1997. Katharine Q. Seelye, House votes to block F.D.A. on approval of abortion pill, New York Times, June 25, 1998. Gina Kolata, U.S. approves abortion pill, New York Times, September 29, 2000.
Haiti (last updated July 14, 2001) (back to top)
Haiti has had a turbulent period of coups and questionable elections since 1986, when the 29-year dictatorship of the Duvalier family ended. An international military force military rule and restored the democratically-elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power in 1994, but the current government, led once again by Aristide, has questionable legitimacy.
Provisional governments led the country from 1986 to 1991, and a constitution was ratified in 1987. Haiti's first fair elections were held in December 1990, and Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a Roman Catholic priest, won two-thirds of the vote. He took office on February 7, 1991, but a faction of army and economic elites led a violent coup just eight months later. Aristide left the country and began a three-year period of exile. Thousands of Haitians fled the country, causing a large-scale exodus of boat people; the US Coast Guard rescued a total of 41,342 Haitians in 1991 and 1992.
A military regime ruled Haiti from October 1991 to September 1994, ending only when an international force entered the country to oversee the end of military rule. The force was authorized by the United Nations' Resolution 940 adopted on July 31, 1994, and about 21,000 troops (6,000 of whom were from the United States) touched down on September 19, 1994. By mid-October, the military leaders had left the country and Aristide and other elected officials had returned.
Aristide resumed his term as president, and his party, the Lavalas Political Organization (OPL), did well in nationwide local and parliamentary elections in June 1995. Aristide was barred by Haiti's constitution from running for a second term, and his hand-picked successor, Rene Preval, won 88 percent of the presidential vote in December 1995 and took office in February 1996; this was the first transition between two democratically-elected presidents and it went peacefully.
However, political troubles have again arisen in Haiti and have resulted in a government whose legitimacy is in doubt.
In late 1996, Aristide left his party and created a new one, the Fanmi Lavalas. The resulting gridlock left the Preval government unable to organize local and parliamentary elections in 1998, and when the elections were finally held in May 2000, they were criticized as unfair and flawed. Opposition groups then united in what became known as the Democratic Convergence, which decided to boycott the presidential elections in November 2000.
Facing little opposition, Aristide and his FL easily won the elections and Aristide was sworn in once again as Haiti's president on February 7, 2001.
However, the international community and opposition parties continue to protest the government's handling of the May 2000 elections. United States aid is being withheld until the situation is resolved (the US has been Haiti's largest donor since 1973, and contributed $884 million to Haiti between FY 95 and FY 99), and the Organization of American States is threatening to ostracize member country Haiti as well. Internally, the Democratic Convergence has sworn in Gerald Gourgue as the president of a provisional government.
Special prosecutor / Independent counsel (last updated November 4, 2001) (back to top)
For most of the late 20th century, alleged wrongdoings by a member of the executive branch of the government were handled under the provisions of the Ethics in Government Act of 1978. The act became law in the wake of Watergate and expired on June 30, 1999 after the investigation into alleged financial wrongdoings by President Bill Clinton led to an impeachment proceeding over whether he lied about his sexual relationship with a White House intern.
Under the independent counsel provisions, the attorney general would conduct a preliminary, limited investigation upon receiving specific allegations that high-ranking executive branch officials had violated federal criminal law. After 90 days, the attorney general would decide whether the charges warranted further investigation and, if deemed necessary, request a special prosecutor. This request would be heard by a special division of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, consisting of three senior or retired appellate judges appointed by the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. This panel of judges would select a special prosecutor, define his jurisdiction, and release reports to the public.
The attorney general thus had the power to seek the appointment of a special prosecutor and could, for "extraordinary impropriety," remove him from office. These decisions were not reviewable by any court.
Special prosecutors were appointed in at least 18 different cases under the provisions, as listed below. Not every case that warranted preliminary investigation resulted in a request for a special prosecutor; up to 1994, only 13 of 37 cases triggering a preliminary investigation led to a request for a special prosecutor.
- Carter administration (2). Chief of Staff Hamilton Jordan, special prosecution initiated in 1979. White House staff member Timothy Kraft, 1980.
- Reagan administration (7). Secretary of Labor Raymond Donovan, special prosecution initiated in 1981. Attorney General Edwin Meese, 1984. Justice Department official Theodore Olson (now Solicitor General in the administration of George W. Bush), 1986. White House aide Michael Deaver, 1986. Iran-Contra scandal involving Oliver North, among others, 1986. Wedtech scandal involving White House aide Lynn Nofziger and Meese, 1987.
- Bush administration (2). Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Samuel Pierce, special prosecution initiated in 1989. Allegations of misuse of passport files of newly elected President Bill Clinton, 1992. There were also two other minor cases giving rise to a special prosecutor, but information here was not disclosed.
- Clinton administration (7). Whitewater scandal, first investigated by Robert Fiske and then by Kenneth Starr, initiated in 1994 (Fiske was initially appointed on an ad hoc basis in January 1994 during a period when the statute had lapsed, and was replaced by the special division upon the law's renewal). Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, 1994. HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, 1995. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, 1995. Americorps head Eli Segal, 1996. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, 1998. Labor Secretary Alexis Herman, 1998. Attorney General Janet Reno conducted preliminary investigations into, among other things, fund-raising activities by Bill Clinton and Al Gore but concluded that such cases did not warrant the appointment of a special prosecutor.
Before 1978, federal special prosecutors were appointed on an ad hoc basis on three occasions in the 20th century. In 1925, President Calvin Coolidge appointed special prosecutors to investigate the Teapot Dome scandal. President Truman's attorney general appointed a special prosecutor to investigate tax scandals in 1951. And most famously, Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford appointed a total of four special prosecutors to investigate the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s.
The independent counsel statute had many enemies, often depending somewhat on the politics of the day and who was the target (some argued it was also unconstitutional, but it was upheld 7-1 in the 1988 case of Morrison v. Olson; Scalia's dissent there was often brought up by Democrats a decade later to attack the statute). Critics said that the appointment and oversight process was politicized and partisan, that the act covered too many officials who could have been investigated by the Department of Justice without conflict, and that the process encouraged unwarranted prosecutions. Both Attorney General Janet Reno and Whitewater special prosecutor Kenneth Starr ultimately testified in 1999 against renewing the law.
With the lapsing of the independent counsel provisions in 1999, any new investigations of high-ranking executive branch officials are to be handled by the Department of Justice on an ad hoc basis once again. In June 1999, Attorney General Janet Reno established rules for when she would appoint a special prosecutor. Under these rules, she would do so only upon deciding that an investigation would pose a conflict of interest for the Justice Department and that an outside prosecutor was in the public interest.
Sources: Katy J. Harriger, The Special Prosecutor in American Politics (2nd edition, revised) (University of Kansas Press, 2000). David Johnston, Attorney General taking control as independent counsel law dies, New York Times, June 30, 1999. The Special Division of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is available on-line here.
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