SECOND ACTS

By DAVID VAN BIEMA AND STEVE WULF WITH BUREAU REPORTS

STILL IN CONTEMPT

Even a real estate huckster like Susan McDougal would have a hard time selling this Los Angeles home: a 6-ft. by 9-ft. cell in the county jail with a metal-frame bed and no television or reading material. This was where McDougal, a former partner with Bill and Hillary Clinton in the Whitewater Development Corp., spent the week before Christmas. She was awaiting a pretrial hearing related to charges that she embezzled money from the family of renowned conductor Zubin Mehta. But last Friday she was granted permission to return by year's end to the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas, to complete tests for possible breast cancer. There she has been serving a sentence of up to 18 months on a contempt of court citation for refusing to testify before independent counsel Kenneth Starr's grand jury--a matter on which she has shown no signs of relenting.

According to McDougal attorney Bobby McDaniel, the former friend of Bill told her Belgian-born mother the night before she went off to jail of her decision not to testify. Her mother, who had served in the Resistance during World War II, supported the decision, telling her daughter, "If I could stand up to Hitler, you can stand up to Kenneth Starr." As if that weren't formidable enough, McDougal also faces a two-year sentence for her conviction on four felony counts related to Whitewater--a conviction that is being appealed.

STILL NO ARRESTS

On November 6, two months after rap superstar Tupac Shakur died in a storm of bullets while driving with his record-company owner, Marion ("Suge") Knight, Sergeant Kevin Manning of the Las Vegas police turned on his television to find Knight chatting with a correspondent for ABC. "If you knew who killed Tupac," asked the reporter, "would you tell the police?" "Absolutely not," answered Knight.

Manning, who is directing the Shakur murder probe, reacted with disgust. "That, to me, tells the whole story," he says. "Essentially, it's a suspended investigation. We have some suspects, but without a witness saying they were there, we can't do anything." Though Shakur was shot in front of Knight and a carful of retainers, only one, backup musician Yafeu Fula, indicated to police that he saw anything. Unfortunately, Fula was shot and killed in an apparently unrelated drug altercation before he could be interviewed.

"Fula was our biggest hope," says Manning, who at least thinks he knows who didn't shoot Shakur. He dismisses the idea that Shakur was victim of a rivalry with East Coast rappers. He doubts the murder was gang related, despite Knight's longtime affiliation with the Bloods. Manning believes Shakur died because of "somebody being dissed," but that the somebody was not the victim of the beating administered by Knight, Shakur and friends hours before the shooting and captured in a hotel-security videotape. Confusing? One thing seems clear: Shakur's undying popularity. His posthumous album, The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory, has sold over 1 million copies since its release last month.

LIDDY'S TURN

Don't get rid of those DOLE FOR PRESIDENT buttons just yet. While former Senator Bob Dole's electoral career is at an end, wife Elizabeth's may be near to beginning. "If at some point it seemed feasible, that there was an opportunity to run at whatever level, it is an option I might well consider," she says. This is Washingtonese for, Don't count me out in 2000.

On Jan. 2, Mrs. Dole returns to her position as president of the American Red Cross. The view out the former Cabinet member's office window will surely be a distraction: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

EQUAL TREATMENT?

Last week in Charleston, South Carolina, as the Citadel's first four female "knobs" ended their first semester at the military college, lawyers for the families of two of the freshmen brandished nine single-spaced pages detailing what they claim is a series of attacks on the women starting last September. Upperclassmen in their E Company barracks allegedly hit Kim Messer and Jeanie Mentavlos in the head, shoved them against walls with rifle butts, made them sit atop trash cans with legs extended for an hour and a half and forced them to drink alcohol mixed with Mountain Dew and listen to sexually explicit language. Most alarmingly, older cadets allegedly splashed nail-polish remover on the women (and at least one male) and attempted to set their clothes on fire.

While these abuses may fall within the parameters of the Citadel's traditional freshmen hazing rituals, the school has taken the claims seriously enough to suspend two upperclassmen and temporarily, at least, transfer five others. FBI and state investigations into the allegations, launched in mid-December, continue.

The other two female knobs, Nancy Mace and Petra Lovetinska, have brought no complaints. And people who have maintained contact with all four women suggest that Messer and Mentavlos invited ill will by flouting rules--like ignoring lights-out to cruise the Internet. Nevertheless, Messer's father has been quoted as saying that his daughter was "terrorized." Both women took their final exams while living off campus, and it is unclear whether they intend to return next semester.

NOUVEAU FAT

Olestra is coursing through the system, so to speak. In January the "no-fat" fat that Procter & Gamble has spent more than 25 years and $200 million developing was approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in the manufacture of crackers and other snacks. Since April, olestra-based edibles have been available in a few Midwestern and Western cities, where they've been test-marketed by Frito-Lay as "MAX" versions of the company's Ruffles and Doritos brand chips; and by P&G, which is trying out Fat Free Pringles. So far, the companies are claiming success. In Frito-Lay's three test cities, retailers sold nearly 275,000 bags of MAX snacks in less than six months, allegedly generating more than 1,000 compliments, 1,700 inquiries as to where MAX chips could be purchased (many local stores have been shipping them out of state) and only 148 complaints. Sue Dawson, the food editor of the Columbus, Ohio, Dispatch, wrote that the olestra-based Pringles introduced in Columbus tasted "like any other good-quality potato chips." Which is more than you can say about regular Pringles.

The catch is right there on the information label: "Olestra may cause abdominal cramping and loose stools." Both Frito-Lay and P&G claim their test marketing hasn't turned up any unforeseen health problems. Nevertheless, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the watchdog organization that warned Americans against the fat content of movie popcorn, is lobbying the FDA to rescind its approval of olestra, claiming that the additive is not as harmless as claimed.

Consumers nationwide should be able to decide for themselves by 1998. And they will have something else to consider besides the label's warning. In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a 14-oz. bag of regular Ruffles potato chips costs $2.99. A 13-oz. bag of MAX Ruffles in the same store sells for $4.19.

LIVE FREE OR DISRUPT COURT

It can be easier to end an armed standoff than a delusion. Last week Emmett Clark, 68, was in court to hear a new set of indictments against him and 13 of the 24 self-styled Freemen of Jordan, Montana. Clark, a leader of the group, listened carefully to the litany--false tax claims, bank fraud, threats against federal officials, firearms violations--and then refused counsel. "All these things are better done by a lawyer than a lay person," admonished U.S. Magistrate Richard Anderson. "This isn't a game, Mr. Clark." To which Clark replied, "Well, I haven't granted you venue or jurisdiction yet."

Talk about stubborn (or, if you prefer, principled). After an 81-day siege on the former Clark farm last spring and another six months in jail, most of the Freemen have remained faithful to their professed belief in the Federal Government's illegitimacy. They have largely refused counsel, objecting--and belching loudly--at pretrial hearings. Two weeks ago, a federal judge authorized "such reasonable force as necessary" to take their finger and palm prints. Trials are expected to begin no earlier than March 1997.

JESSICA'S LEGACY

There is no peace for the loved ones of Jessica Dubroff. The death of the seven-year-old pilot, who had been attempting to become the youngest person ever to fly cross-country, tore at the nation's heartstrings after her Cessna went down shortly after take-off during an icy rainstorm near Cheyenne, Wyoming, last April. Perhaps inevitably, Jessica's survivors are heading to court: her stepmother, Melinda Dubroff, is suing Jessica's natural mother, Lisa Blair Hathaway, over the life-insurance benefits of Jessica's father, who also died in the crash. Hathaway, for her part, has filed a claim against the proceeds from a policy in which Melinda Dubroff is the beneficiary.

The national spotlight revealed Lisa Hathaway (pictured on this page) as a New Age mother who had been schooling her children at home. In September she was notified by the La Honda-Pescadero, California, school district that she had to enroll her son Joshua, 9, in school in order to comply with state law. She reluctantly agreed to do so, saying, "I'm doing it to be legal and doing it as a temporary measure until I get the law changed. I happen to value education. I do not value school in any way." Hathaway, who is writing a book about Jessica, was also upset when President Clinton signed a bill last October that prohibits people without a valid license (you must be at least 17) from flying to set records. "This bill has one result," Hathaway wrote in a letter faxed to the President. "It removes a freedom from a group of people we call children."

BACK IN OHIO

One of the endearing things--perhaps the only endearing thing--about the scandal that ended consultant Dick Morris' career as Bill Clinton's election-year Svengali is the fact that the prostitute who allegedly rode Morris around his Jefferson Hotel suite was more of a working woman than a working girl. Now 37, Sherry Rowlands may have represented fantasy to Morris, but the more charitable sectors of the public could imagine her as just another middle-aged single gal trying to make ends meet.

Her life continues to seem a good deal more earthbound than her apparently unsinkable ex-client's. For several months Rowlands has been living in Fairborn, Ohio, helping her older sister care for their mother, who is dying of liver cancer. Rowlands is also working on a book proposal about women who are abused by men in power. "You know there is something strange about this person," she says of Morris, "but he has something you really need." She's not the only one he affects that way: it was reported last week that Rudolph Giuliani briefly flirted with Morris about helping run the New York City mayor's 1997 re-election campaign.

SHE VOTED FOR DOLE

Last October, TIME used Lori Lucas, a single mother in Shrewsbury, Missouri, to personify the suburban swing voter courted by all parties in this year's presidential election. Lucas, like many fellow moms, was undecided when she appeared on our cover. Afterward, she began researching the candidates at the local library and decided against Bill Clinton because of the character issue. Says she: "I think he is crooked, more so than I'm willing to put up with." (She was somewhat bewildered at TIME readers who assumed that "because I smoked pot [in high school] and had a baby out of wedlock, I'm voting for Clinton.") It took her longer to decide in favor of Dole, and went with him largely because she thought him trustworthy. On exiting the voting booth, however, she suddenly wished she had pulled the lever for Ross Perot.

By this time, of course, she was no longer a typical voter. Thanks to her fame as a TIME cover subject--and her potential to become a high-profile convert--she found herself engaged in long phone conversations with the head of Dole's state campaign several nights' running. The Perot people sent her a book. The Clintonites never called.

HEAVEN'S DOOR

For the most part, the Scottish town of Dunblane has been left to its grief. Certainly, the press showed up at the half-year anniversary to cover a memorial service, also attended by Prince Charles, in the small town's 13th century cathedral. But in the months since the March day when a failed youth leader named Thomas Hamilton strode into the Dunblane primary school with four legally owned handguns and began shooting--shooting until 16 children and one teacher were dead and Hamilton had put a bullet in his own head--the British media have observed an informal blackout, so that a terrible nightmare has not been made cheap as well.

The gym where the killings took place has been torn down. Concerts and fairs have been held in support of the stricken families, and more than $12 million has been raised to help them, and for memorials. Perhaps the most notable commemoration was set in motion when the father of one victim heard some new lyrics written by a local musician for the Bob Dylan song Knockin' on Heaven's Door. With Dylan's blessing, some of the Dunblane children, including the siblings of four of the victims, recorded the song, which sold 189,000 copies within a week and entered the British pop singles' chart at No. 1. "Lord, these guns have caused too much pain/ This town will never be the same," ran the new words. "So for the bairns [children] of Dunblane/ We ask, please never again." Profits will go to three children's charities.

Another response to the tragedy: the House of Commons voted in October to tighten Britain's already strict gun laws, banning all handguns larger than .22 cal. Prince Philip, who opposes the law, set off a national furor last week when he complained, "If a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, which he could do very easily, I mean are you going to ban cricket bats?" The Prince has since apologized.

--By David Van Biema and Steve Wulf, with bureau reports