The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

Intro

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. In the news today, Arab hijackers seized a Pan Am jet in Karachi, Pakistan, and held 400 passengers hostage for 17 hours. Their ordeal ended in a shootout in which two hijackers and five passengers were killed and some 100 injured. A U.S. carrier and other ships were ordered to the Central Mediterranean. Details of the hijacking and other stories in our news summary coming up. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: After the news summary, our major attention will be on the Pakistan hijacking. A reporter, two Middle East observers and a former Pakistani official will sort through what happened and what may happen next. Then John Merrow ends his week of education reports with one on paying for college.News Summary

MacNEIL: Another U.S. airliner was hijacked today. Five Arabs firing automatic weapons seized a Pan American Airways jumbo jet bound for New York at dawn at Pakistan's Karachi Airport. One American, Rajesh Kumar of California, was shot dead. The three man flight crew escaped through an emergency door. The remaining crew and 400 passengers, including 44 Americans, were held hostage. The hijackers demanded a fresh American crew to fly them to Cyprus. They demanded the release of three Palestinian terrorists in jail there. After 17 hours, the plane's lights suddenly failed when fuel ran out. The hijackers began shooting wildly. Pakistani police stormed the plane. Two hijackers and five passengers were killed. Some 100 passengers were injured, and three hijackers were captured. One of them shouted to reporters, "I am from Lebanon. I am a Palestinian."

In Beirut, an organization calling itself Soldiers of God took credit for the hijacking. As for Libya, that country denied any connection with the incident. However, the U.S. aircraft carrier Forrestal, which was paying a port call in Naples, was dispatched to the Central Mediterranean region before the hijack attempt ended. Jim?

LEHRER: U.S. officials remained mostly quiet through most of the 17 hours of the hijacking. Only after it was over were there full statements of reaction. White House spokesman Larry Speaks told reporters at the Western White House in California, the United States applauds the prompt action of the Pakistani government.

LARRY SPEAKS, White House spokesman: The hijacking of an American -- Pan American Airways flight 73 at Pakistan's Karachi International Airport was a cruel and sinister terrorist act. Our hearts are filled with sympathy for the families of those innocents killed and injured. The government of Pakistan acted boldly and decisively to bring this nightmare to an end, and we applaud Pakistan's exemplary resolve in handling this incident. Pan American Airways should also be commended for their cool and professional competence in helping to assure this incident could be concluded where it started. The terrorists conducted a despicable and cowardly crime by threatening, assaulting and murdering innocent passengers on a crowded airliner -- men, women, young and old -- with machine guns and hand grenades.Nothing can justify such barbarism. We can think of no punishment too severe for the criminals responsible. We are confident that those who perpetrated this brutal act will be brought to justice. We thank God this incident is now ended with the safe deliverance of most of those who had to endure the ordeal inflicted on them and of all civilized society.The President and the First Lady express their condolences to the families of those killed and pray for the speedy recovery of those injured. We look forward to the safe and speedy reunion of the passengers with their families and loved ones.

LEHRER: And late this afternoon in Washington, State Department spokesman Charles Redman spoke to reporters, saying there was no proof of a connection between the hijackers and Libya or any other country.

CHARLES REDMAN, State Department: At the moment, we have reports that the hijackers claim to be members of the Arab Liberation Organization. This group is previously unknown to us. We understand they were Arabic speaking -- either Palestinians or Lebanese. Then, having said that -- again, emphasizing these are the best reports we have right now -- that three were captured, I would simply say that we'd be confident that the government of Pakistan will insure that justice is done.

MacNEIL: Secretary of State Shultz said today that the U.S. had ruled out trading an accused Soviet spy for Nicholas Daniloff, the American reporter jailed by the Soviets. In an address at Harvard, Shultz said, "The administration wanted a settlement that liberated Daniloff without escalation. We are not going to a nuclear war over this. We're trying to get the guy out," he said. In Moscow, a Soviet source told Reuters News Agency that the Kremlin might be willing to release Daniloff into the custody of the U.S. embassy.

The Daniloff issue was raised by the American side in arms control talks in Washington. A Soviet delegation headed by chief arms negotiator Viktor Karpov arrived at the State Department to continue talks begun in Moscow last month. The U.S. team was headed by President Reagan's arms control adviser, Paul Nitze. The talks are intended to find some basis for progress on arms control -- the Soviet condition for holding another Reagan-Gorbachev summit. Secretary of State Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze are due to meet in Washington in two weeks to set a date for a summit later this year.

LEHRER: There was some unexpected good news on unemployment last month. The Labor Department reported today the rate for August fell .1% -- down to 6.8. Most economists had predicted no decrease in unemployment, so the news was welcomed as an unexpected sign the economy may be turning upward.

MacNEIL: NASA had its first successful space launching today since the Challenger disaster in January. At Cape Canaveral, a Delta rocket blasted off, carrying into orbit a package designed by the air force as a Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars, experiment. The payload was two satellites designed to track a rocket and destroy one another. The successful launch was greeted with relief by NASA.

CHARLES GAY, NASA: For morale purposes, the country needed it, because we've had a string of failures. And I think it was significant to everybody. It was sorely needed at this point in time.

MacNEIL: Within a few hours of the launch, a successful Star Wars experiment was completed. Two satellites aboard the Delta rocket monitored the launch of another rocket from White Sands, New Mexico. Then the two satellites turned their sensors on each other and self-destructed.

LEHRER: Overseas, quiet returned today to the South African black township of Soweto. A Johannesburg newspaper said eight people died in the violence that swept through Soweto yesterday. The government said there were some injuries, but no deaths. Separate funerals for nine victims of earlier clashes with police were conducted peacefully today, after clergymen agreed to drop plans for mass burials.

In India today, the government sued Union Carbide, accusing the U.S. chemical company of being primarily responsible for the Bhopal tragedy that killed more than 2,000 people. The suit seeks an unspecified amount of damages.

MacNEIL: That's the news summary. Coming up, the Karachi hijacking. We examine the outcome and how the U.S. retaliates. Then John Merrow on the cost of college education. Flight 073: What happened? What Next

MacNEIL: Our major focus tonight is the aftermath of the Pan Am hijacking at Karachi Airport. As we reported, five Arabs seized a Pan Am jumbo jet en route to New York, killed one American passenger, and held 400 others, including 44 Americans, hostage for 17 hours. It ended in a bloody shootout with five passengers and two hijackers killed, some 100 passengers wounded, and three hijackers captured. For an eyewitness account, we have live on the telephone from Karachi, correspondent Carol Off of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Carol, good evening -- or good morning, your time.

CAROL OFF, CBC Radio: Good morning.

MacNEIL: You were, I gather from other reports I heard you on today, you were at the airport most of the day yesterday your time, and there when the Karachi police or troops stormed the plane. Can you describe what the scene was like there?

Ms. OFF: Well, for most of the day, we were receiving press briefings in a very large room. We were able to wander about the airport and see as much as we could from windows and from vantage points close to the roof. We could just barely see the plane. At one point we were able to get quite close to it on the tarmac. It looked like an empty plane sitting there with nobody inside or outside. There wasn't anyone on the tarmac around them, because the hijackers had requested that everyone be removed from the site. As soon as the Pakistani officials did that for the hijackers, apparently they calmed down considerably, and they gained some trust at that point which was absolutely crucial for those negotiations.

MacNEIL: From your understanding of the situation, how carefully planned was the sequence which resulted in the lights of the plane going out and the specially trained Pakistani troops storming the plane?

Ms. OFF: It seems like it occurred to them that it might be the best way of doing it when the heard the radio reception between the cockpit and the tower start to diminish. They realized, of course, that eventually power would go out for them. The fuel would run out, and they would no longer have the generators to run air conditioning and the lights. They estimated at that point that it would not be much longer before it was completely dark inside the plane. So they were able to negotiate with the hijackers to have a series of delays. At first point, the hijackers said at sunset they would begin to shoot passengers. They were able to negotiate two more hours by saying that Pan Am would not allow any other crew but an American crew to fly, and so they had to be patient while they got the crew from the United States. This would take some time. Then two hours later they said, "Well, we're still trying to get the crew. It's on its way." And in fact, a crew was apparently on its way to the airport, but this gave them more time. So they kept buying time until that crucial moment around 10:00 when the generators went out. They killed the lights on the tarmac so that the whole area was completely in darkness. But then the hijackers apparently panicked, began to shoot people. When they heard the shots on the plane, the military police and the troops that were all -- swarmed all around the tarmac began to move into the plane area, and the passengers were able to escape on chutes. They slid down, hit the tarmac, quickly lying down to escape from the cross-fire that then went on between the police, the army and the hijackers who were on the plane.

MacNEIL: Carol, what is the latest information on the number of wounded passengers? And incidently, is five dead passengers still the correct figure?

Ms. OFF: They have told us definitely that five people are dead, that there are 15 people who are critically wounded, and there's possibly as many as 40 or 50 who were wounded in some way. And they have all been taken to hospital. There was a long cavalcade of ambulances streaming out of the area some hours ago taking all those people to hospital. The other people have all been taken to a nearby hotel where they're apparently quite shaken, and they're meeting up with their families, and we're able to see some of those people and to see the agitated state they were in.

MacNEIL: Do you know the nationalities of the dead passengers and the wounded passengers? Do you know if any Americans are among them?

Ms. OFF: We have not been able to find out any of the nationalities of the people who have been killed or who are wounded. We haven't even been able to get a proper breakdown of what nationalities were the people who were on the plane -- the 389 people who were on the plane. We really don't know, and they don't seem to know.They keep giving us contradictory reports as to how many people were of different nationalities. We really don't know at this time.

MacNEIL: When the captured hijackers were being taken out, were you one of the reporters who heard them say -- heard one of them say, "I am from Lebanon. I'm a Palestinian"?

Ms. OFF: That's right. They were -- we pushed our way onto the tarmac against the police with guns who were trying to push us back, and at one point they, you know, grabbed me and pulled me back quite forcibly, but we managed to get quite close as they were coming out of the area. We could see the plane, and the people -- some of the people were still there at that point, and they hadn't even finished the operation when they were taking the first hijackers out on a jeep. We were able to stop the jeep, and in the back we could see the police had somebody lying face down in the jeep. We thought at first it was one of the passengers who had been shot, but in fact, he lifted up his head. And we said -- we asked him who he was. He said he was a Palestinian liberation commando. And I asked him if he was hurt, and he said yes. But in fact, we were told that he wasn't hurt at all. And then they pushed him back down in the jeep, and we only had a moment to see his face. And looking into his eyes with the floodlights coming in on the tarmac at that point, and then they pushed him down, and he was away and taken to police headquarters for interrogation.

MacNEIL: How -- what do you understand? Was this done -- was the whole ending of the hijacking and the storming done as a Pakistani initiative, or was there close consultation with American authorities in Washington or elsewhere? What's your understanding of that?

Ms. OFF: My understanding is that the whole operation was in the control of the governor of this province -- of Sind. This is the province of Sind that Karachi is in. And they claim emphatically that the whole thing was governed by the Pakistanis. At one point we did ask them if they were talking closely with the Americans, and they denied it quite angrily, telling us that this was a sovereign state, and they would not take orders from anyone else. They were all very concerned about the welfare of the passengers. That was their first priority. And that was all that mattered, and -- but they were in total control. They were not taking orders or instructions from anyone outside.

MacNEIL: Well, Carol Off in Karachi, thank you very much for a very vivid report.

Ms. OFF: You're quite welcome.

MacNEIL: For background on the Pakistani action in storming the plane, we're joined by the former Pakistani interior minister, Mahmoud Haroon. He's been in touch with officials in Karachi, and he joins us from public station WEDH in Hartford, Connecticut.

Mr. Haroon, how was the storming of the plane planned, in your understanding?

MAHMOUD HAROON, former interior minister, Pakistan: Well, you see, we've had a few experiences of hijacking. One was our own aircraft. After that we specially trained a group of people for hijacks. And another was an aircraft of the Indian Airlines which had landed in Lahore, hijacked by Sikhs. And therefore, we had specially trained personnel for this hijacking system. And the government of Pakistan views very strongly and condemns hijacking of any nature -- of any kind whatsoever -- because we ourselves, as I said before, have been the victim of this.

MacNEIL: I see. Would the delays we just heard described by Carol Off -- the buying of time -- was that purposefully done so as to give time for this specially trained force to be brought to the airport and put into position?

Mr. HAROON: The specially trained force is deployed -- I mean, most of them are available -- at Karachi, Lahore, Islam, etc. But the best opportunity of having the passengers and the plane recovered is in the darkness. And therefore, they were buying time 'til darkness came.

MacNEIL: Do you and the officials you talked to today regard this as a successful termination to this hijacking?

Mr. HAROON: Well, I would say so, and I think so, because in a hijack, there is always the risk and chance of people suffering injuries or a few dying. Taking into consideration that there were 400 passengers on board the aircraft -- I mean, we greatly -- I greatly regret that five of them died unnecessarily. They were innocent victims. But that couldn't be avoided if we had to think of the safety and of the maximum number of passengers and also recovery and also discouraging hijackers in the future.

MacNEIL: What is the calculation about how long to wait to tire out the hijackers and make them less confident in the hope that you may have no casualties at all?

Mr. HAROON: I think there is that chance, but there is also a chance that they may get desperate after frustration and then take much more severe measures then they would normally. In a case like this, they had very little chance. They may shoot out, but then if there -- if we wait too long, that they should get tired and then give up, that's a very dangerous situation. We have examined this before, and we have found that it can swing completely to the other side.

MacNEIL: Describe the special -- were you, when you were interior minister, were you in charge of this -- the training of this special force?

Mr. HAROON: No, there were three forces combined -- I mean three authorities: the interior, civil aviation and the defense forces. They were combined together to plan all this operation, and we are one of the few countries in the world -- about eight or ten -- who right at the beginning, along with America,Germany and Ireland, trained a force for this special purpose.

MacNEIL: Let me ask you another question. In a press conference this evening, Pan American Airways said that the United States Federal Aviation Administration issued a warning just last week about the need for heightened airport security and mentioned the Karachi Airport in particular. What were the security problems at Karachi Airport?

Mr. HAROON: Well, the security problems were that it wasn't cordoned off all around. But lately, in the last three months, they have put fencing all around the airport completely along the perimeter and all avenues which lead into the airport premises; not just the tarmac. And they have put up grills, and they have taken these measures.

MacNEIL: Well, Mr. Haroon, thank you. We'll come back. Jim?

LEHRER: We go next to John Walcott, national security correspondent for theWall Street Journal. He was the coauthor of his paper's story last week about U.S. preparations for another wave of terrorism by Libya. John, according to the State Department, though, there is no Libyan connection thus far discovered. Is that correct?

JOHN WALCOTT, Wall Street Journal: That's right, Jim. I think the three most terrifying words in any journalist's vocabulary are "I don't know." But the fact is that at this moment no one knows who these hijackers were, much less who they were working for.

LEHRER: Is there a suspicion that Libya may be found if they keep looking or what are they -- are they just dismissing that?

Mr. WALCOTT: No, I don't think anyone's dismissing anything. I think the intelligence people now are going to pursue this very hard to find out if there was a Libyan connection, if there was an Iranian connection, if there was possibly a Syrian connection. But they have very little to go on at this point, and I think most of this is going to turn on what these terrorists say when they're interrogated by the Pakistanis. That's going to give us the best evidence there is of who these folks were.

LEHRER: We heard what the CBC correspondent said about the involvement of the United States -- that the Pakistani officials bristled when they even asked about this. What is your understanding about that?

Mr. WALCOTT: Well, the American officials all up and down the line are saying that this was an operation that was run by the Pakistanis, and there doesn't seem to be any question about that. We've just heard that the Pakistanis have a commando force that's capable of doing this kind of thing. In fact, it's a force that's quite highly regarded by the Americans. They were perfectly capable of doing this on their own. So I think, from what I know, this was indeed a Pakistani operation.I don't think when they offered up the suggestion, they were told, "Yes, go right ahead. Any way we can help you?" The United States did offer to help, just as it offered to help the Egyptians recover an airliner they had hijacked in Malta. A number of bits of technology the United States can provide to help people get into an airliner under these kinds of circumstances. But basically, all of the credit for this -- or blame, as the case may be -- belongs to the Pakistanis.

LEHRER: Mr. Haroon just told Robin that he considered this a successful operation on the part of the Pakistani government. Is that view -- is that the same view held by U.S. officials, at least the ones you've talked to today?

Mr. WALCOTT: Well, it is. What we've heard now on the record from spokesmen from both the State Departmentand the White House is high praise for the resolute action by the Pakistanis. And I think, first of all, the Americans were pleased that this airliner stayed in Pakistan. That solved a lot of the problems we've seen in previous hijackings, when we had people flying all over the world with guns to their heads. And that didn't happen this time. And that certainly was successful. The loss of life appears to have been far less than it was in the Egyptian commando operation on Malta, although no one knows at this point. So I think the bottom line is, it's hard to call this successful or unsuccessful until we know how many people died.

LEHRER: Is this -- the fact that the pilot and his two fellow cockpit cohorts vacated the ship right at the beginning -- this is a new wrinkle in airport hijackings. Is this a new procedure? Was -- what have you found out about that?

Mr. WALCOTT: No, it's not a brand new procedure. And I think there probably will be a temptation on the part of a lot of people to say, as you suggested, that the captain deserted the ship. In fact, the Pan Am crew acted exactly by the book. And in so doing, they disabled that airliner. They made it impossible for the hijackers to put a gung to their heads and to say, "Take us to Tehran. Take us to Beirut. Take us to Libya." And that, in turn, enabled the Pakistanis to get onto that airliner. None of that could have happened if that flight crew had been sitting up in the cockpit. And so, by the book at least, that Pan Am crew did the right thing, even though it may appear to be deserting the ship.

LEHRER: But that is not a new book? I mean, I -- we -- I could not recall, and none of our folks could find anything where this had ever happened before -- where the crew of a hijacked airliner had gotton out.

Mr. WOLCOTT: Well, the 747 is somehwat easier to get out of than some other aircraft. In fact, there is a hatch in the floor of the cockpit of a 747 designed for this and other emergencies, and it also has a sort of winch arrangement that allows the crew to swing down on ropes which lower them -- it's about three stories from the cockpit of a 747 to the ground. And this arrangement, built in by Boeing, allows the crew to get out of the 747 much more easily than you can get out of, say, the Boeing 727 that was hijacked earlier this year.

LEHRER: John, I wasn't suggesting they'd done anything wrong; only that they'd done something unusual. And I shouldn't have used the word abandoned; you're right. You're right. Thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: How, if at all, the United States responds to this latest act of terrorism depends on who the administration believes is responsible. One clue to that may lie in the demands the hijackers were making -- the release of three terrorists imprisoned in Cyprus.

[voice-over] The prisoners are believed to include two Palestinians and a Briton named Ian Davison.Last February, the three were sentenced to life imprisonment for the brutal murders of two Israeli men and an Israeli woman aboard a yacht in a Larnaka, Cyprus, marina. The woman was shot in the back as she tried to flee. The two men were found face down in the yacht's cabin with their hands tied behind their backs. They'd also been shot in the back. The attackers claimed the three victims were Israeli intelligence agents. This charge was denied by the Iraeli government. At their trial, Davison said he felt no guilt, and the three expressed pride for having committed the act. Davison, an unemployed laborer, is believed to be a member of Yasir Arafat's Fatah guerrilla group. Arafat denies any association with the three terrorists.

[on camera] With us now to consider the identity of the hijackers and what options are available to the United States, we have Geoffrey Kemp, former senior director of Near-Eastern affairs at the National Security Council, currently a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Michael Hudson, director of contemporary Arab studies at Georgetown University.

Mr. Hudson, do you, first of all, with all the names we've heard this evening -- the Arab Liberation Organization, Soliders of God, Libyan Revolutionary Cells, which was a phrase used earlier today -- and the demand of these hijackers that some -- the terrorists we just saw in Cyprus be released, where would your speculation be directed about who these people are?

MICHAEL HUDSON, Georgetown University: Well, it would have to be very much speculation. At least two of those names are quite unknown to me, and I think the linkage that might help us identify them is the fact that they seemed to want to go to Cyprus and get their colleagues out from that prison. That suggests to me that it is a Palestinian resistance operation. Who might have funded it, who might have directed it, of course, is very hard to tell. I thought as it unfolded that there might be -- it seemed to be a little bit like the hijacking of the Egyptian airliner last year. And when you think about the people who did that, they were called the Nasari Revolutionary Organization or the Nasari Revolutionary Brigades. One could sense, perhaps from the nomenclature, but also from the conjunction of ideological concerns and the methodology as well, that these folks might be related. If that's the case, it sounds as if Abu Midal, the Palestinian renegade who is out to depose Yasir Arafat as too moderate in the PLO, might have been behind it. And the funding and indirect support -- well, Libya, Syria and Iran are the countries that are named, but it's very difficult to tell, at least at this point.

MacNEIL: Geoffrey Kemp, the fact that one of the hijackers told that CBC correspondent, "I'm a Lebanese. I'm a -- I'm from Lebanon. I'm a Palestinian." That doesn't rule out the fact that Libya might ultimately be behind this, does it?

GEOFFREY KEMP, former National Security Council member: Well, it depends on what you mean by behind it, Robin. If you mean provided support in the form of money, training and logistics, they could well be. As could, indeed, Iran or anyone else. The question is, did they mastermind it? And that's, of course, what we don't know. It seems from what evidence we have that it was a pretty skillfully carried out operation, and therefore could not, probably, have been done by a random group operating in a vacuum.

MacNEIL: Where would your speculation be directed?

Mr. KEMP: Well, my -- I rather, like Michael Hudson, I tend to think it would be on the extremist factions of the PLO. I don't think at this point in time it's in Yasir Arafat's interest to be associated in any way with an operation like this. And for precisely that reason, Abu Midal's name has to be considered.

MacNEIL: This fact that the names are not familiar to you two who are experts in this -- isn't it true that often they invent the name of a group just for a particular operation? We've heard that described, for instance, at the time of the Achille Lauro hijacking.

Mr. KEMP: Absolutely.

Mr. HUDSON: That's right. There seems to be a proliferation of telephone calls at moments like this, and nobody really knows, I think, whether the Islamic Jihad or a number of other smaller groups are really discrete groups or not. It seems to me, though, that whoever they may be in particular, what you see here is a very disturbing thing for the United States in the long run, because you have a conjuncture of very important constituencies and communities who have elements in them that seem to have some public support and who are really in a sense ar war now with the United States government. You've got Islamic extremists, you've got Libyans, you've got Palestinian extremists, and you have Lebanese extremists. And sometimes it's conceivable that they all work together.

MacNEIL: Is there anything, Geoffrey Kemp, in the -- can you suggest anything that would explain the timing of this incident?

Mr. KEMP: No, I can't. And I tend to take a more optimistic view, quite frankly. I think that you're always going to have groups that are against the United States. But what I think we have to take into consideration is that in both this occasion and in the last occasion when there was a major hijacking, the Moslem governments of the Mideast, with the exception of Libya, have -- and Iran -- have behaved in a very tough manner. Kuwait has not given in to demands to release their prisoners. The Pakistanis have been very tough. The Egyptians have been very tough. This is a war not just against America; it's against any government that wants a reasonable solution to the problems of the Mideast. And in fcat, you could say that the extremists would intensify their terrorism were there to be movements toward peace in the Mideast.

MacNEIL: Michael Hudson, any suggestions on timing to you?

Mr. HUDSON: Well, I don't think I would go all the way with Geoffrey. It seems to me that in the short run, you might find a resurgence of activity as a peace process got underway, but it seems to me the sad part --

MacNEIL: I mean, just to name a couple of things that are going on, there is talk of a summit meeting between Mr. Peres and the president of Egypt, and the talks are continuing between the Egyptians and the Israelis over finding a solution to the Taba situation.

Mr. HUDSON: Yes, you can see that, and you can see the fact that the United States government might well retaliate against Libya if Libya could be found to be holding the smoking gun, which is something certainly that extremist elements throughout the region would like to encourage.

MacNEIL: Would like to provoke, you mean.

Mr. HUDSON: Yes.

MacNEIL: You mean they might be following up on the recent very public American warnings that they suspected that Libyan terrorism might be resurgent and that they would be prepared to strike again if it were?

Mr. HUDSON: Well, I think that's a possibility. Although, again, the Palestinian character of this operation seems to be becoming clearer and clearer.

MacNEIL: Geoffrey Kemp, what options are there for the United States to do anything about this?

Mr. KEMP: Do about what?

MacNEIL: Do about -- to retaliate for or to punish somebody for this terrorist act today.

Mr. KEMP: Well, I mean, as everyone's said this evening, we just don't know what the facts are. Until we know what the facts are, it's very difficult to speculate. My assumption would be that if there were a smoking pistol and if Mr. Khadafy were holding that smoking pistol, we would have to retaliate against Libya in some form.

MacNEIL: If there's so much uncertainty about what thefacts are, why would the Forrestal and some other ships be -- which were intended to stay in Naples until the middle of this month -- be hastily dispatched back to the Central Mediterranean?

Mr. KEMP: Oh, I think --

MacNEIL: Near Libya, in other words.

Mr. KEMP: I think that was for pretty obvious reasons. The plane might well have taken off from Karachi and could have ended up in either Cyprus or, heaven forbid, Beirut, in which case you could have had another three week, four week saga, and you would want force offshore.

MacNEIL: Michael Hudson, what do you think about options for the United States to make some response to this terrorist act?

Mr. HUDSON: Well, again, I'd prefer to look at the longer term. And it seems to me that with the stagnant diplomatic process in the region where, despite meetings that may or may not take place soon, basically things don't seem to be going anywhere. I think this provides a kind of an underlying environment in which events like this can take place. Furthermore, I know from reading public opinion out there, there's an increasing perception, not just among extremists out there, that the United States is also at war with the Moslems and at war with the Arabs. And the United States, of course, has used force in the Lebanon war against Syria, against an Egyptian plane, against Libya recently, and is seen to have sanctioned the Israeli raid against the PLO at Tunis.

MacNEIL: Well, thank you both. Jim?

LEHRER: Yes.Mr. Haroon, back to you first. Do you think the United States should be looking for somebody to retaliate against as a result of this incident?

Mr. HAROON: Well, the main thing that I think is for all countries of the world who believe that human beings who are innocent should not suffer, very strong action should be taken against hijackers anywhere in the world.That is the first issue. And secondly, they must be made to realize that their objectives will never succeed, whether it is to release a few prisoners or whether to pressurize any government, etc., and they can never succeed on that issue either. In this particular case, it is too presumptuous and too early to say yet, but I think Pakistan was chosen with a special purpose, because Pakistan's attitude against hijacking, etc., has been very strong. And our relationship in the area has been very good. And therefore, one of the objectives could be to bring Pakistan into disgrace with our friends -- United States of America and others. And also, because we are trying our best to normalize our relations with India, to spoil and ruin that also, because this aircraft came from Bombay. We have to look at these backgrounds too. I mean, it's too early yet to definitely comment on them, but these are the thoughts that come to me from my past experience.

LEHRER: John Walcott, what were the thoughts of the people you talked to today about why Pakistan -- why this incident occurred there?

Mr. WOLCOTT: It's a hard question to answer, Jim, because Pakistan does have a record of being very tough with hijackers, and it would be my expectation, if there are in fact three hijackers in custody, that they will be tried and probably hanged as a result of this. Pakistani justice is pretty tough. There's not much parole for hijackers in Pakistan. So it's a very hard question to answer. There has been some evidence in the intelligence channels this year that both Abu Midal and Khadafy have been doing a little recruiting, have been active at least at a low level in Pakistan. And that goes back to the early part of the year, before the American strike against Libya. It seemed to have quieted down in the interim. But there is some evidence that both of those groups -- both the Libyans and the Abu Midal faction -- had tried, at leats, to get some things going in Pakistan, or at least tried to get something. And I think there it's probably worthwhile to look at the close relationship Pakistan has with the United States. It's an Islamic country that has very close relations with the United States, and I think that may make it an attractive target to some of these anti-American groups.

LEHRER: What about the point that I think Mr. Kemp made, or maybe it was Mr. Hudson, that this was -- this was a slick operation there today. These people obviously knew what they were doing, well trained, all that sort of thing. What kind of signal does that send to those people in the State Department and the U.S. government who are going to try to trace this back and find out who is responsible?

Mr. WOLCOTT: Well, I think, exactly as Mike said, this was not a fly by night operation. You don't just waltz into Karachi and round up four uniforms of airport security people and walk out on the tarmac loaded to the teeth with explosives. On the other hand, obviously, this operation didn't go too well. It didn't succeed from the point of view of the terrorists, I don't think. So it appears, however, just as Mike said, that there was someone, some power, someone with some money and some know-how, behind this. And I think there is going to be a very intensive search underway to find out who.

LEHRER: People always said, and people have said it on this program every time there is a terrorist action, why doesn't somebody do something? In this case somebody did do something. Has this -- has a new era been ushered in, Mr. Kemp, on how to deal with hijackings and terrorism as a result of what happened at Karachi today?

Mr. KEMP: As I said earlier, I come out of this slightly more optimistic, I think, than Michael, because I think this has to be seen in a sequence of events. And I think that the Libyan raid, although condemned widely at the time throughout the Arab world and particularly by the Europeans, I think on balance has served our short term purpose. It's showed our resolve. It's given others resolve as well. And I would say that it's not just the United States -- that other countries in the Mideast -- not just Israel, but Arab countries as well and Pakistan and India -- are showing an increasingly tough line towards terrorism. The Europeans are now cooperating with us far more than they did before the raid on nonmilitary sanctions against Libya. This is good.

LEHRER: Michael Hudson, would you not agree that to a potential terrorist out there that this sends a very different message than they have been getting up 'til now?

Mr. HUDSON: Well, I think it's -- no, I don't think I would agree fully. I think Jeff may be whistling in the dark a bit, because I don't think you have to go all the way in the constituency that these people operate in to have a success of some sort.

LEHRER: This couldn't be considered a success, could it?

Mr. HUDSON: Oh, I think undboutedly it will be considered a success by their friends and supporters in the region. It was successful as soon as they took the plane. I don't want to say antying one way or the other about the skill of the Pakistanis in overcoming it or whether it was the right moment or not, but I think the message is that, indeed, these people know how to hijack jumbo jets, no matter what precautions may have been laid on in advance.They are, indeed, at war not only with the States, but with moderate Moslem Arab governments like Pakistan.

LEHRER: But I was getting -- the point I was getting at -- not too well, I guess -- was that the signal here is that in the past when these things happened, that the government -- the host government or the United States or whoever was not willing to risk any lives in order to end the hijacking. And that signal changed a little bit, did it not, today?

Mr. HUDSON: Yes. Yes, I would agree with that. But in a sense, if you're really extreme, you'll say, "Fine. That's what we want. We can expect nothing in the way of goodwill in negotiation from these powers, and so we do these things."

LEHRER: All right. Michael Hudson, Mr. Kemp, Mr. Walcott, Mr. Haroon in Hartford, thank you all four for being with us. Will We Learn? -- Degrees of Debt

MacNEIL: Next, the fifth and final story in our education series this week: paying for college. The average tuition for most colleges has gone up to almost $10,000 a year, and many schools cost more. How five different students are trying to make their payments is the story that education correspondent John Merrow reports tonight.

JOHN MERROW: For many American families, the biggest single expense these days is incurred right here on a college campus. Sure, a home costs more, but you can take up to 30 years to pay it off. You don't have that luxury with a college education -- an education which can end up costing more than $70,000. Here at Johns Hopkins, a private university in Baltimore, the yearly tab is more than $16,000. It was only $6,000 just ten years ago.

[technical difficulty]

MacNEIL: Sorry about that. That report on tape started nicely, but something happened and caused it to start to run backwards. We hope we'll be able to see it again now.

MERROW: It was only $6,000 just ten years ago. Rising college costs, as well as continuing cuts in government student aid, are forcing students and their families to make some very tough choices.

Instructor: Why don't you just inject about 100 microliters?

MERROW [voice-over]: Take Lora Sims, for instance.

Instructor: Why don't you go ahead and inject, and --

MERROW [voice-over]: She came to Johns Hopkins to study pharmacology, but her parents couldn't afford the tuition. So to pay for her education, she's chosen to go heavily into debt.

[on camera] When you graduate, how much in debt will you be?

LORA SIMS, Johns Hopkins University: Fifteen or sixteen thousand dollars.

MERROW: What's that feel like?

Ms. SIMS: Some mornings, when you're looking for something to be upset and paranoid about, it gets a little hard to get up. You know, I wonder, "Why am I doing all this work just to come out $15,000 or $16,000 in debt. And is my education here worth the demands that it's placed on me?"

MERROW: Well?

Ms. SIMS: I'm still here.

MERROW [voice-over]: to remain at Johns Hopkins, Lora works 30 hours a week in a campus laboratory. And, like two thirds of the Hopkins students, Lora's receiving financial aid. The university awarded her a $6,300 scholarship. She received two federal grants, totalling $3,100, and she borrowed another $3,650 from the federal government's loan programs.

Ms. SIMS: The negative side of it is, it gets very frustrating. I work, you know. I work -- last semester I was working two jobs. This semester I'm working in the labs, so, you know, quite a few hours a week. Plus going to class. When I come home, I'm tired. And then I study. And I spend more hours studying. And sometimes it gets very frustrating. You feel like you're not going to ever get ahead.

MERROW [voice-over]: As long as she's a student, Lora does not have to make payments on her loan. Six months after graduation, the payments begin -- just over $180 a month every month for ten years. Before she's through, she'll have paid back nearly $22,000, including interest.

Ms. SIMS: People see us, I think, continually read it inNewsweek and things, you know, we are the generation who's conservative.We're concerned about going out and making money. I don't see $15,000 to $16,000 coming out in two years how I can be any other way.I'd love to go into the Peacd Corps. I think it sounds absolutely fascinating. But you know, that's still two more years that's missing, and I don't see how I could really, really warrant that.

MERROW: It was at his first press conference that the Secretary of Education said college students really have it too easy.

Ms. SIMS: Oh, I -- every time -- it just -- every time I think of that comment, my temperature goes up 50 degrees. I just -- it infuriates me. You know, he was talking about the loans given to college students, and they spend it on their Florida spring breaks and -- what a lot -- I mean, I'm staying here during spring break, probably, working. If I don't work here on campus -- if there isn't something to do in a lab -- I will go and work outside of the campus somehwere, hopefully full time.

MERROW [voice-over]: Many students borrow money to pay for college. Others take on a different kind of debt -- eight years of military service. One such student is John Leso, a sophomore at Johns Hopkins and a close friend of Lora Sims. He won an army ROTC scholarship to the college of his choice. Without it, he probably wouldn't be at Johns Hopkins.

JOHN LESO, Johns Hopkins University: The way it looked with my family's financial condition, I probably could have afforded a public school, like the University of Maryland or something like that. But because my grades were really good and I was really involved in high school, I really wanted to try to apply for a prestigious college. But my parents really couldn't have afforded that. So I looked into scholarship applications, and one of the things I looked into was ROTC.

MERROW [voice-over]: John's army ROTC scholarship pays for full tuition and books, plus $100 a month. He lives at home, saving the costs of room and board.

[on camera] You know Lora Sims. Could you have done what she's doing -- gotten financial aid, borrowed a lot of money, and gone through college that way?

Mr. LESO: I definitely could have. I mean, that was a way to go, but ROTC just looked like so much more of an opportunity, because it's not a loan. It's not something that I have to pay back, monetarily at least. Whereas, if I were just -- if I had accumulated many loans, that's obviously -- it's nothing other than just money coming out of my pocket. I'm not actually -- that's not benefiting me in any way.

MERROW: Any envy? After all, you have a pretty good deal.

Mr. LESO: From other people on campus that I'm in ROTC? Sometimes. I don't talk about my scholarship a lot to other people. But when I do, they do envy the situation. People will say things like, "Boy, you know, I wish I didn't have to worry about tuition." For an example, Johns Hopkins just increased its tuition $800. And a friend of mine in ROTC, we were looking, at that, and it's just like, "Hmm, well that's a shame, but we don't have to worry about it."

MERROW [voice-over]: The ROTC scholarship John Leso earned is highly prized. Each year the armed services give only 26,000 of them, and last fall more than 3.3 million students enrolled as freshman in college. While most students receive some form of aid, increasingly it comes in the form of a loan, rather than a grant. In 1978, loans made up only 17% of federal student aid. Today, close to 60% in loans. And with college costs continuing to go up, sometimes it's just too much to borrow.

LISA GALLAY, St. Mary's College: I got this letter saying I was accepted, and the part telling me that I didn't get financial aid fell out of the packet, and I didn't see it until I came home from celebrating. And then I looked on the floor, and there it was. It was just crushing.

MERROW [voice-over]: The acceptance letter than Lisa Gallay received was from Bryn Mawr College -- like Johns Hopkins, an expensive, private institution costing more than $15,000 a year.

Ms. GALLAY: I had applied without even thinking that there wouldn't be money there. You know, I had this kind of vague idea that it would work itself out and if you worked really hard and you did the grades and you did the tests and you were very active and they accepted you, that everything else would just fall into place.

Student: So I didn't think it was bad for him to do that, even though he was overstepping his boundaries as an employer. It's one --

MERROW [voice-over]: Lisa ended up here at St. Mary's, a public college in her home state of Maryland. Bryn Mawr did offer her a $40,000 loan package over four years. That gave her a choice: either a nationally known private college and a large debt, or a lesser known but inexpensive public college -- not an easy choice for Lisa.

Ms. GALLAY: I tried to figure out, was it really going to make that much of a difference in my education to go to Bryn Mawr? Was it that much better? And how much difference does undergraduate education make? And you know, I felt certain that there would be a difference -- that whatever that atmosphere was at Bryn Mawr that had captured my attention was there and would be important.But I also weighed that out with the fact that I would have to live in abject poverty while I was there. I'd have to always be worried about money. And I thought that might interfere with my enjoyment of it.

MERROW [voice-over]: She also felt that being $40,000 in debt would severely limit her career options.

Ms. GALLAY: The things that I'm considering now are things like being a historian or an archaeologist or a writer. And all of those are kind of shaky professions. And I just can't see myself compromising what I want to do. And at the same time, if I had such a big debt, I would feel much shakier about doing them, just because I know it's hard to get a job as a professor, and going around the world digging for ancient civilizations doesn't generally pay that much.

MERROW [voice-over]: Ironically, her college may be benefiting from situations like Lisa's.Although St. Mary's is a public institution, it attracts students with higher grades and SAT scores than many private colleges.

MICHAEL ROSENTHAL, dean, St. Mary's College: Indeed, we are fortunate enough to get students who might go to more expensive private colleges who find it hard to afford and see us as awonderful educational bargain, which we are. So we benefit in that sense. And the selfish part of me says that's good. But it isn't good for society.

MERROW [voice-over]: Michael Rosenthal is dean of St. Mary's College and no stranger to what's called the middle class squeeze. His daughter transferred from an expensive private college to St. Mary's, because he couldn't afford the tuition.

Mr. ROSENTHAL: It's particularly striking when it's your own family and your own pocketbook, and you realize that finding $10,000 a year is simply not possible for you. I would like to see a society in which some combination of grants and loans and merit scholarship would allow a student who really wanted to go to that expensive school to go without penalizing the family to a degree that was really unreasonable. I think the way things are now and the direction that we're going, it simply is impossible.

Ms. GALLAY: If you can decide that you don't get a bonus, because you're not living the way I think you should be living, then that's a form of control.

MERROW [voice-over]: But despite having chosen the less expensive public college and despite a scholarship from St. Mary's for $2,300 a year, Lisa Gallay is also borrowing to pay for college. She'll be about $8,000 in debt when she graduates.

[on camera] Borrowing is a fact of life for college students today. Last year the typical college senior was $8,000 in debt on graduation day. But only half of those who enter college earn degrees. Others find the financial burden overwhelming. They drop out and go to work. That's what Ken Hackley had to do. Today, instead of cracking the books, he's working the phones here at Garfinckel's, a Washington area women's store.

KEN HACKLEY: This is your billing address.

I mean, it takes money to go to school. And I have to drop out in order to continue to get the money. Like now I'm working full time.

MERROW [voice-over]: Ken Hackley is 21 and a college dropout. He owes the $1,000 he borrowed in order to begin going to college, and he's saving now so he can go back. He believes it's worth it.

KEN HACKLEY: You can't get anything in this world without a degree. And if you're going to be anyone, you can't get anything in this world without having some type of degree, whether it's an AA degree, bachelor's degree or a master's. You just can't do it.

MERROW [voice-over]: Ken's father completed his own college education just last year and is now paying back his student loans.

KEN HACKLEY: I don't ask him for anything. He's helping me out at homewise. I don't have to pay that much rent or anything like that. He understands that I am trying to go to school. I help out as much as I can around home. And he's helping me out that way. He's helping me out morally as much as he can. He can't help me out financially, which I understand.

MERROW: Here you are, 21, you're not in college, working part time, trying to save money. Do you ever get discouraged?

KEN HACKLEY: Discouraged a lot.

MERROW: Tell me about that.

KEN HACKLEY: It's a feeling that you want something so bad, and it's like it's so far away, and you're constantly trying to reach that goal, but obstacles are steadily thrown in your way. It hurts knowing that I want something so badly and it's like just trying to reach out for it. I keep striving for it, hoping that one day something's going to pull through.

MERROW [voice-over]: So far, Ken Hackley has saved just over $1,000 toward his dream of having a college degree in computer science. Ken's 19 year old brother Daryl has the same dream. He's studying at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where tuition, room and board cost $4,400 a year. Only a freshman, Daryl Hackley is already $2,500 in debt.

DARYL HACKLEY: It's hard sometimes to really sit there and study when you have a financial burden over your head. You try to push it in the back of your mind, but it's still there.

MERROW: What do you mean it's there? How is it there? What's it feel like?

DARYL HACKLEY: Like a leech. I mean, maybe it may affect other people differently, but just the idea of owing money in that amount when you don't have it is something that tears at you.

MERROW: Like a leech?

DARYL HACKLEY: Like a leech.

MERROW: What's that mean?

DARYL HACKLEY: It tends to take away your joy. You have worries. You sit there, and you're trying to do your work, but it's like it's a haze over things. It's a cloud. It just doesn't -- it seems like you don't -- you can't find a way out.

MERROW: How do you see yourself in ten years, besides still paying off your college loans?

DARYL HACKLEY: In ten years, I see myself as a proud American striving, trying to better myself and, in that, bettering my community.

MERROW: But you aren't sure if you'll be in college a year from now.

DARYL HACKLEY: Exactly. I'm holding onto hope.

MacNEIL: Daryl has more than hope to hold onto, and so do other students we spoke to. Talk show host Johnny Carson saw our report last April and decided he wanted to help. Through the John W. Carson Foundation, he set up a scholarship fund, and now all four young people we spoke to in that report are in college and out of debt. Ken Hackley is joining his brother, Daryl, at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, and Lisa Gallay is now able to afford Bryn Mawr, where she began her sophomore year yesterday.

LEHRER: Again, the major story this Friday is the hijacking of a Pan American jumbo jet in Karachi, Pakistan. Five Arab terrorists held 400 passengers hostage for 17 hours. The hijacking ended after a gun battle between Pakistani troops and the hijackers. Fifteen passengers and two terrorists were killed.The three other hijackers were captured. Up to 65 passengers were wounded. At the Western White House, spokesman Larry Speaks called the hijacking despicable and cowardly. He said the United States was unable to link the hijacking to any specific group or country at this time. Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: That's our News Hour tonight. Have a nice weekend. We'll see you on Monday night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.