The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

Intro

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. Leading the headlines today, the U.S.-run Radio Marti began broadcasts to Cuba. Cuba reacted by cancelling an immigration treaty. The Pentagon received a windfall of several billion dollars through an inflation-rate change, and most major banks joined in lowering their prime lending rate to 10 . Robin?

ROBERT MacNEIL: Here's our NewsHour table of contents tonight. After our summary of the news, three focus sections. First, on those alleged Pentagon windfalls, Congressman Les Aspin, who found them, talks with the number-two man at Defense, William Howard Taft IV. On the new Radio Marti broadcasts to Cuba, Senator Lawton Chiles of Florida debates the former top U.S. official in Cuba. Finally, school desegregation. We have a documentary report from Denver and a discussion between an NAACP lawyer and a parent skeptical about busing. News Summary

LEHRER: At 5:30 this morning Cuba had a new uninvited guest, a radio station called Radio Marti.

ANNOUNCER: Buenos dias, Cuba! Estais escuchando Radio Marti en el aire hoy. Ahora Radio Marti!

LEHRER: It broadcasts music, sports religion and news from a transmitter in the Florida Keys. The USIA's Voice of America is in charge. The Cuban government retaliated immediately to Radio Marti's premier broadcast, announcing the termination of an immigration agreement with the United States, among other things. That agreement authorizes the immigration of 20,000 Cubans a year. By coincidence, the first 11 of those so-allowed arrived with 17 relatives in Miami by plane this morning, just as the agreement was canceled. Victoria Corderi of station WPLG-Miami reports.

VICTORIA CORDERI, WPLG-Miami [voice-over]: The Cuban ex-political prisoners and their families' first moments on U.S. soil were quiet ones. The group of 28 filed through Customs fresh off a pre-dawn charter flight, unaware that after they left Cuba, Fidel Castro once again shut the door on immigration. They were met by a crush of waiting relatives and reporters, all eager to hear their stories. And there were many. These two brothers hadn't seen each other in 19 years. "It's been 19 years," says the former prisoner, "it's not easy." His niece, seeing him for the first time, had no trouble summing up her feelings.

DAISY MARTINEZ: Now he really gets to see what it's like, you know, to live in a free country and experience things that he never did before.

CORDERI: Fernando Fonseca spent 14 years in Castro's jails. He says he's grateful to President Reagan. The emotional reunions that took place here hours ago were supposed to have been the first of many. Under a U.S.-Cuban accord signed last year, Cuba would have allowed 3,000 ex-political prisoners and thousands more of their family members to emigrate here. Now that Cuba has canceled that agreement in anger over Radio Marti, the future prospects of those ex-prisoners who remain on the island are uncertain.

LEHRER: We will have more on Radio Marti right after the news summary. Robin?

MacNEIL: Congressman Les Aspin threw a new element into the defense budget debates today by claiming that the Pentagon has reached windfalls of billions of dollars by overestimating inflation. The Wisconsin Democrat said the Reagan administration had consistently overestimated inflation in preparing the Pentagon budget and therefore overcompensated for it.

Rep. LES ASPIN, (D) Wisconsin: We've consistently given the Pentagon more money than we thought was necessary for the program that we were buying, and the best estimates are, that I can figure out, is that that number that we have given them in excess is somewhere between $18- and $50 billion. Those are astounding statistics in two ways. Number one is the size of them; those are very, very big numbers. The second thing that's astounding is that there is so much uncertainty, that we don't know with more precision what that number is that we have given them in excess of what was necessary to buy the program.

MacNEIL: The number-two man at the Pentagon, William Howard Taft IV, acknowledged that the savings run into billions of dollars, but says that's good news, not bad. Testifying before a House Armed Services Committee, Taft said, "I think it's very regrettable that words like windfall and secret are being applied to this." Both Secretary Taft and Congressman Aspin will debate the matter in our lead focus section right after this news summary.

The FBI today arrested a retired Navy man on charges of attempted espionage for the Soviet Union. They said retired Chief Warrant Office John Anthony Walker, aged 47, was arrested after they recovered a paper bag containing classified documents left in a ditch in a Washington suburb. The FBI said the documents were believed to have been left in the wooded area to be picked up by Soviet agents. They said that Walker, who is from Norfolk, Virginia, had clearance for classified Navy codes before his retirement.

LEHRER: Three more big banks lowered their prime lending rate to 10 today, the lowest it has been in more than six years. Morgan Guaranty Trust and Chemical Bank of New York and the First National of Chicago were the three, joining Citibank, Chase and Bankers Trust of New York, who did it last week. The prime is the rate banks charge their biggest business customers, but often foreshadows future drops in consumer rates as well. Today's actions were also encouraged by Friday's decision by the Federal Reserve to lower the discount rate, the rate the Fed charges member banks for borrowed money. There was also an economic statistic development today. The Commerce Department reported disposable personal income was up 2.9 last month, the largest monthly increase on record. It was largely attributed, however, to the receipt of delayed income-tax refund checks by many Americans. And President Reagan announced today that $825 million federal dollars will be spent on jobs for young people this summer. He used the occasion with Labor Secretary Brock to renew his pitch for a special sub-minimum wage scale for young people.

Pres. RONALD REAGAN: Under the current minimum wage law, for example, many young people have been priced out of the labor market. To put these young Americans back in the market we have proposed the youth employment opportunity wage, legislation that would allow employers to hire young people at a lower minimum wage during the summer months. Our bill would increase summer employment opportunities yet provide explicit safeguards to protect permanent employees and the young people themselves.

LEHRER: The stock market really loved all of the news about lower interest rates. The Dow Jones industrial average rose nearly 20 points today, to a closing 1304, the first time ever it has gone over 1300.

MacNEIL: The Westinghouse Electric Corporation will have to pay $75- to $100 million to clean up six hazardous waste sites under an agreement with Washington. The Environmental Protection Agency said it was the largest hazardous waste settlement in the history of the EPA. All the sites are in Bloomington, Indiana, and are contaminated with PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, which are known to cause cancer in laboratory animals.

LEHRER: The U.S. Supreme Court today resolved a copyright dispute over former President Gerald Ford's memoirs. The Nation magazine had published excerpts from those memoirs in 1979 without permission from or payment to their publishers, Harper & Row. Today the court sided with Harper & Row, ordering The Nation to pay a $12,500 copyright infringement award won in a lower court. The Nation had argued that the memoirs were news and the public's right to know about the public business of a former President superceded anybody's publication rights. The head of Harper & Row welcomed today's decision saying, "It proved a person's work cannot be appropriated by merely calling it news."

The attorney general of the United States today turned his attention to combating pornography. He announced an 11-member commission to study its effects and recommend ways to curb it.

EDWIN MEESE, U.S. Attorney General: It is abundantly clear that with pornography we are not dealing with one passing incident, one magazine or one play or one film. We are dealing with a general tendency that it pervading our entire culture, including the culture known to very young children. The formation of this commission reflects the concern that a healthy society must have regarding the ways in which its people publicly entertain themselves and the moral climate in which its children are reared.

MacNEIL: Israel and the Arabs conducted a lopsided exchange of prisoners today. The Arabs gave up the last three Israeli soldiers known to be in their hands, and the Israelis returned more than 1,100 prisoners, most of them Palestinians and Lebanese. The three Israelis, who had been held by a Syrian-supported faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization,were flown to Geneva in a chartered plane. At the same time, several hundred Arabs were on their way to Geneva, where they were taken to board planes for the trip home. Meanwhile, several hundred more Arabs were released on the Syrian-Israeli frontier and on the occupied West Bank of the Jordan River. There some of them were greeted with warm welcomes from waiting relatives.

In Beirut, three Palestine refugee camps became battle grounds today when Shiite Muslim Lebanese of the Amal faction attacked units of the Palestine Liberation Organization. At least 52 people were killed, and more than 300 wounded in heavy fighting. The Amal Shiites are trying to disarm the Palestinians and keep them from rebuilding their fighting strength.

And in Northern Ireland, three policemen and a policewoman were killed when their patrol car ran over a land mine. The government blamed it on the Irish Republican Army. Windfall?

MacNEIL: As we reported, there's a new element today in the already complicated debate about how much money the Pentagon needs, and that's how many billions of dollars they have still unspent because inflation was lower than estimated. For our lead focus section tonight we look further into this, and Judy Woodruff has more. Judy?

JUDY WOODRUFF: Robin, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee is charging that the Pentagon has secretly picked up an extra $18- to $50 billion over the past four years, mostly because inflation hasn't been as high as expected. The man who made the charges, Congressman Les Aspin, Democrat of Wisconsin, is with us this evening.

Mr. Aspin, what exactly are you saying the Pentagon has done?

Rep. ASPIN: I'm saying that what has happened, and not because of anything that the Pentagon has done, but in a way because the news on the economic front is better than anticipated, is that we have given -- Congress -- has given, the Pentagon more money than was needed to cover the programs that we were buying, because we estimated that inflation was going to be at a certain level, and every year under the Reagan administration the inflation has been lower than was anticipated before the year began.

WOODRUFF: Well, why didn't we know about this until now? You're saying this has been going on for the last four years.

Rep. ASPIN: Four years, really. The numbers are just beginning to come into focus now. I mean, we're always dealing, when we're dealing with numbers, we're always dealing a year or two behind because of the problems of collecting the statistical evidence. We knew it was happening; we didn't know to what extent it was going on, I mean in terms of what total dollars we're talking about. And, as the report that I issued shows, we still don't know what we're talking about in terms of total dollars.

WOODRUFF: So you're saying you don't know that anyone in particular is to blame, that this has just happened, is that right?

Rep. ASPIN: It's not something that you want to blame. In other words, it's not -- as I said in the report, I'm not trying to blame the Reagan administration for this action. What I'm saying is that because we estimated inflation incorrectly we have given them more money than they needed. It's the reverse of the problem that we had in the '70s, where we kept underestimating inflation. In that case we didn't give them enough money. And we found what was happening to it in that case. In that case what they did was they robbed the O & M accounts and the nuts and bolts and things to keep the military running, and it was not a good situation.

WOODRUFF: Do we know what happenedto the money?

Rep. ASPIN: No. That is the interesting question: what has happened to that money? Whether it's $18 billion or $50 billion, where has it gone? In the report that I issued I got some ideas of various places to look, but I don't know for sure where they are. Probably some in all of them.

WOODRUFF: So we don't know if we can get it back, in other words?

Rep. ASPIN: Exactly.

WOODRUFF: What difference does it make that they've gotten more money?

Rep. ASPIN: Well, I think it matters in terms of, obviously, the deficit. I mean, if we don't have the dollars that we're spending, if we don't need to spend the money, we would have money to spend on other programs and spending money on other programs or reducing the deficit or reducing taxes, whatever you want to do with it, if you don't have to spend the money on something that you thought you had to, it seems like you'd rather reprogram it elsewhere.

WOODRUFF: Well, what does all this say about what they're asking for this year? I mean, as you know, they come back every year and say, "We need more money. We need more money."

Rep. ASPIN: I know. The problem is you don't know what the moral of the story is for this year. Are we to assume that because we have overestimated inflation in the past that we're overestimating inflation this year? I don't know. If we say we did overestimate inflation in '81, '82, '83 and '84 and we're doing it in '85, maybe we ought to guess that it's going to happen in '86, so we'll just arbitrarily take out some money. We could do that, but you have to at that point be pretty confident that you think that the pattern is going to continue into the future.

WOODRUFF: What do you think should be done?

Rep. ASPIN: We might take out a little bit of money, and I think that it -- but you want to be prudent about it and you have to be very careful. But I would take out a couple of billion, maybe.

WOODRUFF: Well, I mean, why wouldn't you just take out as much as they had overallocated?

Rep. ASPIN: Because you don't know how much they've overallocated. See, right now we're dealing with a projection of what inflation is going to be in the fiscal year 1986. If past patterns hold true, that number is too high, but we don't know for sure that it's too high, and if it is too high, we don't know how much it is too high. That's the problem. What we're dealing with is an economic estimate of an inflation number, and that estimate is made over in the Pentagon and in OMB and in all these places. It's made a good 20 months before the fiscal year ends that we're dealing with because they have to get their budget together. So they make an estimate of what inflation is. That's okay. The problem is, is when the inflation rate at the end of the year, you go back and look and see what it was, and what we've found is at the end of the year the inflation rate in the year that we're talking about is less than what we had thought it was before it began.

WOODRUFF: Stay with us, Congressman Aspin. We'll be right back to you. Robin?

MacNEIL: The Pentagon says all this has proved it's cracking down on costs, not improperly estimating actual expenses. For more on the Pentagon view we have the number-two man there, Deputy Secretary of Defense William Howard Taft IV.

Mr. Secretary, first of all, do you agree with the proposition that inflation has been consistently overestimated and that you got more money than you needed as a result?

WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT IV: Well, yes. We have overestimated inflation because we were not aware of the great effect that we were going to have with our economic program. I should say that the projections that the administration has presented in each year have generally been lower than the congressional budget office has agreed to, and they've been on the very low end of the scale. So we've been edging as far down as anybody, and usually we've -- it's been said we're too low. But it turns out we were not.

MacNEIL: I notice your earpiece has slipped out of your ear. Can you hear me? You might want to put it back in there.

Sec. TAFT: Aha! Thank you. I have you now.

MacNEIL: Okay, you have me. Well,what figure would you put on this amount of money? The congressman says it's somewhere between $18- and $50 billion. What figure does the Pentagon think it is?

Sec. TAFT: Well, we have saved a great many dollars, not simply due to inflation, and it's hard to segregate what amounts are due to reductions in inflation and what amounts are due to management improvements and introducing competition and multi-year efforts and other reforms. It's hard to break out that this dollar came from an inflation reduction and this one came from something else. But we certainly have saved in billions of dollars over the past four years by both of these actions or areas, and $18 billion is right. But that doesn't -- we have used the money. There has been nothing secret about this. Congress has been fully aware of it, and it's been used to, indeed, reduce the deficit, to fund other programs, or it's still there and may have to be used if our inflation estimates are wrong.

MacNEIL: When you go to the till now, if that's not too absurd a figure of speech for the Pentagon, what have you got there now? I mean, how many billions of dollars have you got that hasn't been used that could be applied to this year's budget?

Sec. TAFT: Well, we just recommended the other day, in fact, that in our execution of the 1985 budget we have developed savings of about $4 billion, not just inflation but a number of sources for this, and we've recommended that that be used to fund program in the 1986 budget, and we hope that it will be.

MacNEIL: When the secretary of defense was defending each level of the budget proposals as they were, or as they still are in the administration's mind, he said any cutting would reduce the effectiveness of U.S. defense. The discovery of this amount of leftover money, is that an argument for spending less in the budget that's being debated right now?

Sec. TAFT: No, it doesn't have to do with that, in fact. What it has to do with -- what we need for our national security is a given defense program, not a given defense dollar amount. The source of the funds for that program is what's in issue here, whether we need to appropriate new money or whether we can use some savings from prior years. The program is what we need to defend the country. That's what the secretary was talking about, that he needs that program. And indeed he does.

MacNEIL: But some savings from prior years would be available to apply to the figures that are said to be necessary this year?

Sec. TAFT: They make it easier to fund the necessary program, and that's exactly what the $4 billion that was presented and recommended last week was for.

MacNEIL: Is this a little bit of a political embarrassment for the Pentagon right now, to be found with so much in the kitty just when the size of what's necessary is such a hot political topic in Washington?

Sec. TAFT: No, I think what we are glad is that we have been operating the department economically and saving money that people, the Congress, thought we would need to get the program. And it's now available, has been made available for funding necessary defense programs. That's exactly what we're meant to do, is to save money.

MacNEIL: Well, thank you. Judy?

WOODRUFF: Mr. Congressman Aspin, the secretary seems to be looking at it a different way. He's saying that what they've done is saved money and that that's not a bad thing.

Rep. ASPIN: Well, there may be some savings. What I was talking about in this report, though, is essentially the effect of inflation, the extra money that they got through inflation just by overestimating the inflation rate. There may be, in addition, savings that Secretary Taft has gotten through management devices, though there may be more. But I think there is a minimum of $18- to $50 billion, and it's an awful range, of money that's in there that has been appropriated. It may not still be there, but money that has been appropriated over and above what was necessary.

WOODRUFF: Are we talking about the same money, Mr. Secretary?

Sec. TAFT: Well, I think the important thing to remember is that if the money isn't necessary for the program it won't be spent. We don't spend money that we don't need, and in fact over the past three years we have returned over $7 billion to the Treasury that was appropriated and that will never be spent.

WOODRUFF: Wait a minute. Let me get something straight. Are you saying there is a problem or there's not a problem? It sounds to me like Congressman Aspin is saying more money than was necessary was appropriated, and you're saying there's been a savings.

Sec. TAFT: I'm saying that if that -- what was appropriated was the best estimate of what the program would cost at the time it was appropriated. To the extent that we've come in below that, and we have, that's good. That's a saving in what we estimated the program would cost. We're meant to do that. And if we don't need the money, we won't spend it.

WOODRUFF: So what's the problem?

Rep. ASPIN: It may be still there. The question is, what has happened to the money?

WOODRUFF: Well, let's ask the secretary. What has happened? Go ahead and finish your point, all right.

Rep. ASPIN: Let me give you four possible places that the money has gone, or four possible uses that the money has been put to. One is that it's still there, and that's the point that Secretary Taft is making is that the money is still available and unspent. And I'm sure some of it still is. The unexpended, unobligated balances, which is that amount of money that has not been written into contracts, has grown in the Pentagon, and maybe part of it's that inflation dividend that we're talking about. But the other thing is, is that maybe some of that money has gone to defense contractors, depending upon how their contract was written and how inflation was written into that contract. Perhaps some of that money has gone to defense contractors and ended up in their pockets in the form of higher profits.

WOODRUFF: Can we ask him?

Rep. ASPIN: Now, I know that they're trying to get -- they're trying to get some money back from a couple of these defense contractors, in money that was given that they now calculate was overcompensating for inflation. So I think they're trying to get some of it back.

Sec. TAFT: And we will get some back. We also have $7 billion, as I say, we returned to the Treasury unspent because we don't need it.

Rep. ASPIN: Third category is money that has lapsed. In other words, the money stays available only for a certain amount of years. At that point if it's not spent it lapses and goes back into the Treasury, and the secretary is right that over the last four years, I guess it's been, there's been some $7 billion that's lapsed and gone back into the Treasury. So that I'm sure is part of the question. The other thing is that maybe it got fiddled or switched into another account. The Pentagon can switch money from one account to the other with the proper approval of the four relevant committees in Congress. So money can be shifted from submarines to tanks, or whatever, and maybe some of that money got shifted. Congress can do that. There's a lot of places that this money might have gone.

WOODRUFF: Does all of that suit you just fine, I mean --

Rep. ASPIN: No. Some of it suits me fine and some of it doesn't. Shifting from one account to another, if it's in the national interest, that's okay. If it's still sitting there, fine and good. If it's gone to defense contractors in extra-high profits, that's not so good.

WOODRUFF: We've already addressed this, but what does all this say about how much money the Pentagon should get in new, additional funding this year? You said --

Sec. TAFT: Well, the issue for this year is what program do you want? What kind of a defense program do we need to assure the national security? And then there's a second issue, is how much does that cost, and we should appropriate what it costs. These funds, the $4 billion of them that we identified last year, can be a source for that. But they don't reflect -- it doesn't have any impact on what program you need or what program we should pass.

WOODRUFF: So what are you saying?

Sec. TAFT: I'm saying we should pass the program that we've requested and find the funding for it from the most economic way we can.

WOODRUFF: Whether it's from --

Sec. TAFT: Savings, if we have them, and we've identified some of them for the committee, and from new money, where that's required.

WOODRUFF: Has the taxpayer been well-served in all this?

Rep. ASPIN: We can't tell. Unless you know more about where that money has gone, I don't think you can answer that question.

WOODRUFF: So what you've done, then --

Sec. TAFT: We think he's been very well served by the savings that we've come up with and, as I say, they're beyond the wildest dreams of the people who appropriated the funds.

WOODRUFF: But you're not convinced of that?

Rep. ASPIN: I'm not convinced. I have a suspicion that some of that money got wasted. I have a suspicion that some of that has ended up into the wrong hands. Some of it may still be there. To the extent that it's still there, we ought to use it for this year's budget, and in fact then you can pass -- the secretary is right. What we ought to decide is what do we need to defend the country, and then the second question is, where do you get the money? If we have some money sitting in the till, to the extent that there is money sitting in the till, we don't need to appropriate new money.

WOODRUFF: Do you believe in the Pentagon in the future when they say we need x-amount of dollars to do X, Y and Z?

Rep. ASPIN: I don't think I've ever believed them in the past on that.

Sec. TAFT: Well, I think we should be believed. I think the price is -- what we come up with tended to be lower than what our critics suggested we would need, and we've been closer to the truth than our critics have over the past four years.

WOODRUFF: Thank you both, Secretary Taft, Congressman Aspin.

Rep. ASPIN: Thank you.

WOODRUFF: Jim?

MacNEIL: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, Senator Lawton Chiles of Florida and the former top American official in Havana debate the impact of the new Radio Marti broadcasts to Cuba. Then a documentary report from Denver raises new questions about school integration, which we take up with a concerned parent and a civil rights lawyer. Broadcast Battle

LEHRER: We move next to the story of Radio Marti, the USIA-run radio service to Cuba that went on the air this morning to bad notices from the Cuban government.

ANNOUNCER: Buenos dias, Cuba! Estais escuchando Radio Marti.

LEHRER [voice-over]: Radio Marti operates from a studio at the Voice of America in Washington and has a 50,000-watt transmitter in the Florida Keys. This morning it promised its listeners a mix of news, music and commentary during its daily 14 -hour schedule.

ANNOUNCER: Musica, opiniones, historia.

LEHRER [voice-over]: Congress put the Voice of America in charge of Radio Marti and has demanded accurate, unbiased news reporting. The Reagan administration, which conceived the project four years ago, had wanted a radio outlet similar to Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, which broadcast to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Cuba retaliated swiftly and on several fronts today. Besides canceling the immigration treaty, Radio Havana denounced Radio Marti, warned of worsening U.S.-Cuba relations and began transmitting a tone on Radio Marti's frequency, apparently to jam its signal. American radio station operations have been concerned that Cuba, in reprisal for Radio Marti, might interfere with their signals. Two years ago, while Radio Marti was being debated in Congress, Radio Havana beamed programs all the way to Salt Lake City, Utah. Today, however, there was no sign of such Cuban radio interference.

[on camera] We look further at Radio Marti now with two men who see it very differently, Senator Lawton Chiles, Democrat of Florida and original legislative sponsor and strong supporter of Radio Marti, and Wayne Smith, a critic. He served as chief of the U.S. Interest Section in Havana from 1979 to '82. He is currently director of the Cuban program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Study here in Washington.

Mr. Smith, is Radio Marti the right thing for the United States to be doing?

WAYNE SMITH: No, I think opponents of Radio Marti opposed it on the grounds that it wasn't really necessary. The administration's position that the Cuban people had no alternatives to their own government's controlled news channels was simply never true. As you go across the radio dial in Havana about 50 of the stations you pick up are American stations, including some Spanish-language stations from Miami. And, most importantly, the Voice of America has been heard for years all over the island, and for some 15 years had its own programs for Cuba. Now, there was no reason at all that, if the administration wished to simply get more information to the Cuban people, they simply couldn't have augmentethan wanting to get more information to the Cuban people.

LEHRER: Like what?

Mr. SMITH: Well, such as campaign promises. This I would see as a payoff to the Cuban-American community, and they wanted to do something very dramatic. It wasn't necessary. We could have augmented Voice of America broadcasting. We could have done that four years ago. I think it's unfortuante that the Cubans have suspended the immigration agreement, because I think that agreement was in the interest of both sides, and I think their action is premature. They might well have waited to see what Radio Marti turns out to be. But they're highly suspicious. It's a very emotional issue.

LEHRER: Senator Chiles, you support Radio Marti, though, right? You disagree with Mr. Smith?

Sen. LAWTON CHILES: Well, I think that we are broadcasting on the Voice of America channel. We're broadcasting through the same -- it's under the Voice of America. I think it's going to be a highly professional organization. I think that's one reason it took so long to get it on the air. The staff that they were putting together, the practice that they were going through. And, you know, I don't see why Cuba should be so supercharged about this if they're not concerned about the truth coming into Cuba. Cuba broadcasts itself -- it used to broadcast a few months ago Radio Moscow, that would come into the United States. They broadcast about 400 hours a week to Africa and to South America and Central America. So they're in the broadcast business very big themselves.

LEHRER: What about Mr. Smith's point that it wasn't needed?

Sen. CHILES: Well, the very thing that Mr. Smith is saying is the reason some changes were made. Originally it was going to be a separate station and a separate entity, and there was concern about that, and as the legislation was compromised, it was placed under the auspices or. SMITH: This was a compromise. This was a compromise accepted by the opponents of Radio Marti, and if Radio Marti in fact adheres scrupulously to the VOA guidelines for accuracy and responsibility, it may cause -- well, it may cause problems, but it may have few complaints from its opponents in the United States.

LEHRER: Senator, what about the price of Radio Marti? I mean, like what Cuba did today, cancelling the immigration agreement, and has promised to do other things, even to jam the signal? Is it worth it?

Sen. CHILES: Well, first your word "cancelled." Cuba suspended the agreement.

LEHRER: Suspended. Okay.

Sen. CHILES: And this is not the first time Cuba has suspended agreements with us. Any time they get riled about anything that happens, they take an action like this. I think really we have to sort of sit back and see, you know, what happens. Obviously I would like to see political prisoners from Cuba. We've been trying to get them, to allow them to be able to come to the United States for a long time.

Mr. SMITH: Well, I disagree with that.

Sen. CHILES: This agreement has been on and off, you know, a number of times. And the fact that it's suspended now I think is unfortunate. But again I think, you know, we have to determine what our foreign policy should be, and we shouldn't be so concerned that Mr. Castro might do something. And, my goodness, you know, we want to be very careful that we --

LEHRER: Don't make him mad?

Sen. CHILES: -- we don't make him mad. We ought to determine what our foreign policy should be and then do that.

Mr. SMITH: Oh, I couldn't agree with that more. I think we should want to do this in the most effective, the most cost-effective way. I'm not sure that this is the most cost-effective way. As I said, we could have simply expanded VOA broadcasting, without setting up Radio Marti at all, and I think that would have been the best way to go. First of all, we could have had programs on the air four years ago. As to trying to bring about the release of political prisoners, I certainly don't agree with that. The Reagan administration turned its back on the some 1,500 ex-political prisoners we had a commitment to take and made absolutely no effort -- not only made no effort, it refused to take them for some four years. Now, finally, under the immigration agreement, it had said that it would -- an immigration agreement which it took the Reagan administration four years to get around to negotiating, when they could have negotiated it in February of 1981.

LEHRER: Well, what about the senator's point that the fact that Castro suspended that today may be just, you know, a gesture on his part? I'm reading into what he said, but Castro had to do something so he suspended the agreement, but it's nothing to get --

Mr. SMITH: I think I would agree with the senator on that.

LEHRER: Nothing to get that upset about right now?

Mr. SMITH: Well, I think it's unfortunate, but I agree with the senator. I think we ought to sit back and wait, and I think opponents of Radio Marti should sit back and wait and see what it actually does. I'm not very optimistic, but --

Sen. CHILES: I only have one thing to say about the campaign promise, because I don't know anything about the campaign promise. I happen to be a Democrat, and I am a strong supporter of Radio Marti because that is something that our Cuban-Americans have wanted and have been pushing for for a very, very long time. And they have felt that basically we need to send the truth in there. Dante Fascell, who is chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House, is a strong sponsor and is a strong sponsor of the House. So this is a measure that had a lot of bipartisan support and certainly wasn't motivated by us by a campaign promise. It was what, you know, we felt would be good and what we felt that the Cuban-Americans basically wanted to see, so that the people on the island of Cuba would be able to get the truth.

Mr. SMITH: It was a campaign promise made by the Republican administration, and with all due respect to the senator, of course the congressional delegation from Florida will support it because there are so many Cuban-Americans in Florida.

Sen. CHILES: We were supporting it long before --

Mr. SMITH: I'm not suggesting there's anything wrong with that --

Sen. CHILES: -- there was any campaign --

Mr. SMITH: But whether --

Sen. CHILES: -- is what I was saying. This is an idea that wasn't -- the genesis of this idea was not the campaign. I like to talk against Republicans whenever I get sort of a chance, but the genesis of this idea didn't come from that.

Mr. SMITH: Well, actually Jesse Helms raised the idea first, attached it as an amendment to the State Department appropriation some years back. He was the originator of Radio Marti.

LEHRER: As the senator from Florida, are you and your fellow Floridians concerned that Castro could jam radio signals or send a high-blown broadcast from Cuba into Florida now in retribution for this?

Sen. CHILES: Well, Castro has done that before. He's done that before Radio Marti was even discussed, a number of times, and certainly we've been concerned about his ability to do that and his propensity to do that. I think now that if he takes that action, I think we are not without the ability to counter that kind of action. I hope we don't get into that. I hope that Castro doesn't do that.

Mr. SMITH: Tom Enders, when he was assistant secretary, said that we might carry out surgical air strikes to take out the Cuban antenna if they interfered with our commercial radio channels. My point is, yes, this is what the Cuban-Americans want. Is it really good for the rest of the United States, and wasn't there a better way, a simpler and quicker and cheaper way of doing it? I say yes there was.

Sen. CHILES: Well, I'm sorry that didn't take place four years ago when someone could have done it then, another administration. It didn't happen to take place then. Congress has been urging that this take place. We had a long discussion about the bill and we passed the bill in a couple of instances before it became law.

LEHRER: Do you think in the long run, Mr. Smith, that this is a serious episode between the United States and Cuba? I mean, the relations weren't that good anyhow. Is this going to make it worse, or it this just another blip on the screen?

Mr. SMITH: That remains to be seen. And I may be a blip on the screen. On the other hand, if Radio Marti gets into more strident propaganda, if it doesn't adhere scrupulously to the VOA guidelines for accuracy and responsibility -- and charges have been made that the VOA itself under this administration is beginning to stray from the guidelines -- if Radio Marti does, then it could cause serious problems.

LEHRER: You don't see that, right?

Sen. CHILES: Picky, picky, picky! No, I don't see that. I think that Congress has set up the legislation, it's said how it's prescribed to be. I think they have a very competent staff. I think it will be highly professional.

Mr. SMITH: Let's hope so.

LEHRER: All right, thank you both very much. Robin? Busing in Denver

MacNEIL: The Supreme Court ruled today that the federal government does not have to help pay the costs of desegregating Chicago's public schools. The court turned down an appeal by the Chicago School Board to force the Reagan administration to pay some $103 million to help integrate the nation's third largest school system. But in some parts of the country the debate is no longer about who should pay but whether school desegregation has accomplished what it set out to do. One city that is taking a second look at its school busing plan is Denver, and Kwame Holman reports.

KWAME HOLMAN [voice-over]: Every weekday morning, second-grader Blake Busch leaves his home in Denver, gets on a bus and rides seven miles to his elementary school. Public school children in Denver have been bused since 1969 when a federal court ordered the school system to desegregate. Blake's mother Valerie supports that effort.

VALERIE BUSCH, parent: I've always felt I wanted my children to go to an integrated school; even before I had children I felt that way. So we moved here knowing our children would be bused.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: But not everyone in the neighborhood felt that way. Many white parents moved their families out just to avoid busing, and that has created a problem at Blake's school. It still is segregated. Blake is one of only 21 whites attending Barrett Elementary; 89 of his classmates are minority.

Ms. BUSCH: The problem has been that too many people have left the city, and as a result there aren't enough neighborhood white children in our neighborhood to integrate Barrett.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: White flight from desegregation is nothing new. What does surprise some is that it continues today. The future of Denver's current desegregation effort can be seen in the latest school population statistics, according to the president of Denver's school board.

NAOMI BRADFORD, President of School Board: As the court order began the city was 65 anglo in its schools. It is now approximately 65 minority. So we're losing our ability to desegregate.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: It's not the numbers, it's the way Denver chose to desegregate that's at fault. So says Dr. Charles Willie, who in the early '70s first worked with the Denver school board, then ended up testifying against it.

CHARLES WILLIE, Harvard University: Denver decided to use a cumbersome approach, which is pairing of schools, which involves transporting people over great distances, and the people who have to be transported over great distances eventually become less interested in desegregation.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: The pairing system which Denver adopted and Willie dislikes involved matching a white neighborhood with a minority neighborhood. For three years the children in the white neighborhood go to the school in the minority area. For the next three years the process is reversed. Minority children are bused to the white neighborhood school. But when the white population ages, moves out or chooses private education, the minority school no longer has a big enough pool of whites to draw from. The paired school becomes resegregated.

Dr. WILLIE: Oftentimes when the demographics of the neighborhood change, the school system is no longer able to maintain a desegregated school system. And my understanding of the court order is that desegregation is forever.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: That resegregation is exactly what happened to Blake Busch's school and to two other schools in the Denver system. But Denver's remaining 104 schools have met court-ordered racial percentages. Pointing at that 95 success rate, the Denver school board now is asking a federal judge to end court-ordered busing.

Ms. BRADFORD: I think one of the major points that needs to be looked at right now is what really is possible, what goals are really possible in desegregation? It doesn't make sense to shoot for the impossible. We believe that if we draw the court order to a close that we'll be able to regain many students of all races, predominantly anglo, we hope.

Mr. WILLIE: To say that only three schools are segregated, therefore we can give up our concern about desegregation, is to deprive the students in those three schools from the beneficial experience that they could have from relating to people unlike themselves. And I don't see how any community has the right to sacrifice any of its people, whether it's three schools or whether it's 30 schools.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: But the concern about the court order goes deeper than those three schools. Some in the community worry about what will happen to the rest of the school system if Denver is released from the court order. The battle for desegregation was hard fought. Homes and 38 school buses were bombed, and opponents of busing put a law on the books that said busing for reasons of race was illegal. If the court order is lifted, that law might be put into effect. The Denver school board refuses to talk about that law since it is part of their negotiations with the judge for lifting the court order. The school board has, however, promised no sudden changes.

Ms. BRADFORD: There will not be an immediate effort to unpair paired schools. And that, when we make changes, the changes will be made on a very careful basis of assuring that we maintain as great a level of integration as we can continue to maintain.

HOLMAN: The discussion taking place these days is not just about ways to achieve better ratios of white to minority students. Some people are now asking a question that hasn't been heard for decades. What is wrong with segregated education as long as the schools are all equally good?

TEACHER: Let's turn on our computer. Okay, let's begin.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Blake Busch's school, which is still overwhelmingly black and hispanic, boasts above-average test scores. Blake's mother says contrary to her neighbors' expectations, it is a good school.

Ms. BUSCH: There have been times when I felt like people must think I'm not a good parent because I'm sending my child to a school where he's going to be bused, because they just assume it's not good. I feel that my son has gotten a very good education.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: To Valerie Busch it doesn't matter that her son is one of only 21 whites in his school.

Ms. BUSCH: I don't get terribly concerned about the fact that our school doesn't have the right percentage of minorities to white. That has never been a real concern of mine.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: An increasing number of minority parents also are taking that view, preferring quality education over ratios. Many blacks and hispanics now say that they've seen too few benefits for all their years of fighting for racial balance. One of the leading proponents of that outlook is Derrick Bell, an attorney who has been involved in over 300 desegregation cases. Now he says the minority parents he represents want something else.

DERRICK BELL, attorney: The parents are still going to have to fight. It's just that they want to fight for something that looks like it makes sense in terms of their children's educational needs, not some ideological hope that lives in the hearts of liberals out in the suburbs. Effective education for minority children, particularly those whose parents don't have options, is the essential that we must work with.

Dr. WILLIE: I think that's a shortsighted vision. It was the absense of integration in the beginning that permitted white-controlled school committees to shortchange black schools, and there is no evidence today that such school authorities will not continue to shortchange all-black schools.

TEACHER: What letter do each one of the words end in?

1st CHILD: Y.

2nd CHILD: Y.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Supporters of integrated education say that the educational achievement of the individual child is not the only thing that matters.

Mr. BELL: Many people have a distorted conception of education. Education has a twofold function -- individual enhancement and community advancement. Not one or the other, but both. Our society has tended to forget about the community advancement dimension of it and is tending to emphasize the individual enhancement dimension.

HOLMAN: Dr. Bell, as you are well aware, there are those who make the argument that one of the benefits of integration is not just quality education but the ability of children of different races, cultures, to be together in the same environment. Is that not a worthy thing for young people?

Mr. BELL: It's worthy, Mr. Holman, but it's unrealistic. We can't ask the schools to correct all the ills of this society. What we can ask -- what we should insist -- is that they educate the kids. The racial balance is the icing on the cake. You don't start putting icing on before you get the cake there.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: But for Dr. Willie, racially balanced education is more than icing. It's part of what holds the country together.

Dr. WILLIE: Desegregation really is for the purpose of making it impossible to harm a black child without also harming a white child. It also makes it impossible to harm a white child without also harming a black child. Royalty in Europe many years ago discovered this technique. This is why sons or daughters in one country were married off to sons or daughters in another country, as a way of preventing these countries from going to war. Desegregation achieves the same outcome.

MacNEIL: For a broader look at the new debate over school desegregation, we have Julius Chambers, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and James Garrett, who heads a coalition of parents opposed to school busing in Prince Georges County, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C.

Mr. Garrett, what lessons do you draw from that Denver situation? Do you feel it's time to de-emphasize integration?

JAMES GARRETT: Well, I think that you have to look at it on a case-by-case basis. I certainly think that to the extent that you have accomplished integration in Denver -- seems that they have 95 -- you have to say, at what cost should we continue to integrate the other 5 ? There certainly are other things that you can do in terms of bringing those particular schools up to par or actually making them excel.

MacNEIL: You think that the quality of the education in a school is more important than the racial ratio in the school?

Mr. GARRETT: Absolutely. Just concentrating on racial balance assumes that you take a snapshot of people, wherever they are, and that they'll be in those same places 10 years from now. It ignores demographic changes; it ignores the fact that when blacks start moving into a neighborhood, they tend to continue and whites continue to move out. It ignores these basic social functions, and therefore we ultimately lead to an objective that we can never achieve 100 .

MacNEIL: Mr. Chambers, is it time to de-emphasize numerical integration and emphasize just the quality of education in those schools instead?

JULIUS CHAMBERS: I think it would be a great mistake to simply emphasize quality education.

MacNEIL: Why?

Mr. CHAMBERS: Desegregation of the schools has led to improved educational programs for students within the schools, and I think it's time that we emphasize both, as we have tried to do over the years: desegregation and quality education. And I think that that's something that can be done, and I think it's important for this country to continue with efforts to desegregate and efforts to improve the quality of educational programs.

MacNEIL: So you would disagree with the school board in Denver? I know you're not intimately familiar with that situation, but in theory you'd prefer to see them continue their busing program, would you?

Mr. CHAMBERS: Well, definitely. I should point out that the Legal Defense Fund is defending the black parents in Denver to try to prevent the school board from going back to the segregated schools that it had before all of this litigation began.

MacNEIL: What would be the harm in Denver's dropping -- or a community like it -- its busing program now?

Mr. CHAMBERS: I think that if it dropped the busing program and desegregation, it would go back to the segregated plans that it had beforehand. We began that litigation years ago in an effort to try to improve the educational opportunities of minority students, and if Denver escapes the order that is presently enforced, Denver, like other school districts, and there are several other school districts that are trying the same thing -- will return to the segregated system of the past.

MacNEIL: What do you say to that, Mr. Garrett?

Mr. GARRETT: Well, we have a similar case in Prince Georges County, where we have over 80 of the schools that are integrated. In order to accomplish the other 20 , we would have to put kids on the bus for an hour and a half. And we certainly think that that's too great of a cost. When this suit was initially filed in Prince Georges County, we had 20 black school system. Today we have a 60 black enrollment. To carry this out to its ultimate conclusion would mean that we would require all schools to be integrated, regardless if we have 95 black population. Therefore we would have to bus white kids throughout the whole county just to insure that at least one is in each classroom. So certainly we are not against integration when it can be accomplished.

MacNEIL: But what do you say to Mr. Chambers' point that if you stop exercises like busing you're just going to revert to totally segregated schools?

Mr. GARRETT: Well, I think busing --

MacNEIL: Go back to the situation, I guess you mean, that obtained before Brown v. Board of Education.

Mr. GARRETT: Well, Brown v. Board of Education really was brought about in order to stop busing because we were busing kids by their neighborhood schools to schools beyond in order to segregate them. So we won that and we actually went back to busing them to integrate. What we have to do is to enforce education wherever the children go to school. If we do that, there are ways that we can cause that to come about, by looking at what goes on in a school, if it is predominantly black, and require the school board to bring those standards up to par.

MacNEIL: Are black parents like Mr. Garrett in general beginning to be tired of all these efforts to integrate? Do you notice that?

Mr. CHAMBERS: I'm not certain whether they are beginning to be tired of efforts to integrate. I think that they are expressing a concern that as we integrate schools we should insure that black students and black teachers and black administrators are provided equal opportunity as well and that the educational programs that students are exposed to are programs that will adequately prepare students to meet today's demands.

MacNEIL: So the emphasis is shifting a bit away from the numbers towards the quality of the education they get when they get into the schools?

Mr. CHAMBERS: I would think that the parents, black and white, are insisting on improving the educational program as we desegregate. I might go back a moment and ask, if we look at the segregated system that we had in this country before Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, and I don't think anyone would argue that black students were segregated but still provided an unequal educational opportunity. The effort in desegregating the schools was to meet that problem and to make sure that black students along with white students are provided equal educational opportunities. And I've seen this work in a number of instances, and the one that I'm most familiar with is in Charlotte, North Carolina, where we desegregated the schools, and black and white parents in Charlotte are quite supportive of the desegregated plan that we have. And desegregation in Charlotte has meant opportunities for minorities not only in education but in other areas as well.

MacNEIL: The local branch of the NAACP is still pushing for stronger desegregation efforts in your region, Mr. Garrett. What do you think of those efforts and what are they going to achieve?

Mr. GARRETT: Well, we think that there is some need for desegregation at the top, in terms of the school board, in terms of the authorities, the superintendents. However, we have substantial integration in Prince Georges County; in fact, we believe it's the most integrated county in the United States. We do have pockets of predominantly black areas that it's almost impossible to integrate, and what we are asking is that they give extra compensation to those schools -- extra teachers, lower classroom sizes -- so that we can bring those scores up. And the entire population of the county, black and white, are for these type of measures.

MacNEIL: Well, thank you both for giving us some of the new emphasis that's coming up in the integration argument. Jim?

LEHRER: Again the major stories of this Monday. The USIA's Radio Marti began broadcasts to Cuba. Cuba retaliated by cancelling a new immigration agreement with the United States and with promises of other things to come. Three more big banks lowered their prime lending rates to 10 . And the Pentagon has ended up with a multi-billion-dollar windfall, it says, as the result of good management; the critics say bad management. Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: Good night, Jim. That's our NewsHour tonight. We will be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.