The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight the new defense plan as seen by Senators McCain and Levin; a Betty Ann Bowser update at the University of Texas; a look at the report on the connection between secondhand smoke and heart disease; a David Gergen dialogue about the army's way of integration; and a Roger Rosenblatt essay about the generation gap. It all follows our summary of the news this Tuesday. NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: The Senate passed a ban on the partial birth abortion procedure today. The vote was sixty-four to thirty-six, three short of the sixty-seven need to override a presidential veto. President Clinton vetoed a similar measure last year. He has promised to do so again. He wants an exemption if the health of the mother is in grave danger. The Senate bill allows the procedure only when a woman risks death. Yesterday, the American Medical Association endorsed the bill after it was changed slightly to protect doctors from overzealous prosecutors. Here's a sample of today's debate.

SEN. BARBARA BOXER, [D] California: Fact: This procedure is used by obstetricians and gynecologists in circumstances where they believe it is in the best interest for the woman to save her life or to save her health. Fact: We have a series of women who have come forward to testify, much to their pain, much to their grief, that this procedure that would be outlawed in the pending Santorum bill, save their lives and their health, retain their fertility in many cases, and the opinion of their doctors was the humane procedure to use for all concerned.

SEN. RICK SANTORUM, [R] Pennsylvania: The Senator from California said, the fact is this procedure is done by obstetricians and gynecologists, she said, acting in the best interest of the mother to save her life and health. That is not a fact, and we all know that. The director of the Association of 200 abortion clinics said that 90 percent of the abortions done-- partial birth abortions done--are done on healthy mothers and healthy babies in the fifth and sixth months of pregnancy for birth control reasons.

JIM LEHRER: The House must approve the Senate version of the bill before it can be sent to the President. A similar bill passed the House by a veto-proof margin in March. House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt said today he's breaking with President Clinton on the balanced budget plan. The Missouri Democrat said he will vote against the deal reached by the President and Republican leaders last week. Gephardt said the proposal would give a $6,000 a year tax cut to the top 1 percent of the nation's taxpayers

REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT, Minority Leader: And when I talk about the top 1 percent, I'm talking about folks making an average of $650,000 a year. Is it shared sacrifice to say to them, you get a huge tax cut every year, 6000 bucks, but the young family, who's trying to make ends meet, we can't help them enough; we can't give them a larger tax cut; we can't give them the kind of help that they need getting through their life every day. It's not fair. I wish it were fairer.

JIM LEHRER: At the White House the President's spokesman, Mike McCurry, said Mr. Clinton accepted and understood Gephardt's decision.

MIKE McCURRY, White House Press Secretary: We never have said anything but that this is a compromise. And when you compromise with Republicans and you're a Democrat, you're going to end up with some things that in the perfect world you wouldn't necessarily have accepted. I mean, we got an agreement. It was not the agreement that the President would have written if he had the pen all to himself, obviously.

JIM LEHRER: The House is expected to pass the budget resolution later tonight. Defense Secretary William Cohen called for closing more military bases today. He and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Shalikashvili presented the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review to the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said base closings were needed to cut costs and pay for modernization. The Pentagon has shut down 97 major facilities since 1988. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. White House Counsel Charles Ruff said today he would hand over 2,000 subpoenaed documents to a House committee. The chairman of the House panel investigating Democratic fund-raising had threatened contempt of Congress proceedings against Ruff. Congressman Dan Burton, Republican of Indiana, canceled the contempt hearing scheduled for tomorrow. Ruff had refused to release the documents because he said they would be leaked to the press and the public. In economic news today, the Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged. The Fed's Open Market Committee had increased rates at its last meeting, March 25th. That 1/4 percent rise was the first in two years. The Committee meets again July 1st. In the Oklahoma City bombing trial today an FBI expert testified that no explosives residue was found anywhere, except on Timothy McVeigh's clothes, ear plugs, and on a fragment from a Ryder truck. Steven Burmeister said he did not find any trace of explosives in McVeigh's car after vacuuming the floorboards. Burmeister testified yesterday an explosive used in bomb detonators was found on McVeigh's T-shirt and pants when he was arrested shortly after the bombing. The Air Force today ordered a delay of the court martial hearing for Air Force Lt. Kelly Flinn. The proceedings were scheduled to begin this morning at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnaul is considering Flinn's request to resign with an honorable discharge. Flinn is fighting charges of adultery, disobedience, and lying. She's the nation's first female B-52 bomber pilot. In Washington, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott criticized the Air Force handling of the case.

SEN. TRENT LOTT, Majority Leader: I am very concerned about what I have seen happening with Lt. Flinn. I think it's unfair. I don't understand why she's being singled out and punished the way she is. I think, at a minimum, she ought to get an honorable discharge. And I've got a lot of other questions about why the Air Force has stepped up to this issue and dealt with it better. I tell you, the Pentagon is not in touch with reality on the so-called question of fraternization. I mean, get real. You're still dealing with human beings, and the way she has been treated really disturbs me greatly.

JIM LEHRER: Military officials said the case is about officer misconduct, and they hold all officers to the same high standards. If honorably discharged, Lt. Flinn would still be eligible to serve as a pilot in the Air Force Reserve or Air National Guard. In Africa today rebel chief Laurent Kabila arrived in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly known as Zaire. He's expected to outline his plans for an interim government to the city's 6 million residents later this week. Kabila has been the country's self-proclaimed president since his forces took over Kinshasa Saturday. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the defense plan goes to the Senate, an affirmative action update, secondhand smoke and heart disease, a David Gergen dialogue, and a Roger Rosenblatt essay. FOCUS -HARD CHOICES

JIM LEHRER: The new defense plan is our lead story for a second night in a row. Last night Defense Sec. Cohen and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Shalikashvili were here to explain the results of their Quadrennial Defense Review, or QDR. They took it before the Senate Armed Services Committee today. Our coverage begins with this report by Kwame Holman.

KWAME HOLMAN: Defense Secretary William Cohen and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General John Shalikashvili used the Senate Armed Services Committee as the first congressional forum to discuss their long-range military plan. Sec. Cohen acknowledged immediately he expects Congress to work its own will with the plan he released yesterday.

WILLIAM COHEN, Secretary of Defense: This is not a document that has been etched on Mt. Sinai and handed down as if they are stone tablets which must be accepted without any modification or, indeed, any integration coming from the Congress because ultimately, this is a joint endeavor.

KWAME HOLMAN: The so-called Quadrennial Review recommends continuing the assumption the U.S. must be capable of fighting two major regional wars simultaneously, most likely in the Persian Gulf and the Korean Peninsula. But it would achieve that goal with a smaller military. The plan calls for personnel cuts numbering 90,000 on active duty, 65,000 reservists, and 160,000 civilians, slowing procurement of combat aircraft, reducing the number of surface ships and submarines by 35, and two more rounds of base closings. The money saved there would go toward increased weapons modernization to create a leaner, more versatile, and high-tech military able to respond quickly to crises around the world. Secretary Cohen responded to early criticism. The plan still leaves the military too large for today's needs.

SEC. WILLIAM COHEN: With respect to the charge that this is simply Cold War thinking, let me indicate to you that I think that the charge is without merit. Since 1985, we have seen a reduction of some 40 percent in the budget for national defense spending. We have seen a reduction of nearly 1/3 of our force structure, and assuming that some aspects of the QDR are implemented, we will go to 36 percent of a reduction in the force structure. We have seen a 67 percent decline in procurement, and that's the chart that you and I used to look at each year with increasing skepticism and doubt. So now we have to face up to the fact that if we're going to prepare for the future, we have got to squeeze something. And therein lies the rub.

KWAME HOLMAN: Republican Dirk Kempthorne of Idaho claimed cuts in the military's support infrastructure aren't being shared across the board in the Quadrennial Defense Review.

SEN. DIRK KEMPTHORNE, [R] Idaho: The QDR seems to put pressure on the Congress to reduce the size of the National Guard, solve the depot maintenance issues, enact two more rounds of base closures, while the services were not asked to, for example, terminate a major weapons system, tackle rolls admission, redundancy, address some of the force structure. Does this review share the political pain?

SEC. WILLIAM COHEN: Well, it's not designed to share political pain. It's designed to produce the best possible force that we can for the future. If I were looking fora way to avoid political pain, I obviously would not recommend further BRAC rounds. I wouldn't recommend any of these items, including any reductions in the guard, which tend to be very popular. But I wasn't looking to be popular on this. I'm trying to recommend to you--and ultimately again you have to be a full partner in this process, what we believe to be the--to produce the best possible fighting force.

KWAME HOLMAN: When Congress called on the Pentagon to produce a Quadrennial Defense Review, it also charged a nine-member panel of outside military experts to review the Pentagon's plan. That panel's final report is due in December.

JIM LEHRER: Now to what two key Senators think of the Pentagon plan and to Elizabeth Farnsworth.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And joining us are two members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. John McCain is a Republican from Arizona and Carl Levin is a Democrat from Michigan. Thanks for being with us. Sen. McCain, in your view, does this plan offer the right blueprint for the U.S. military in the near future?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN, [R] Arizona: I think generally it does, Elizabeth. I think that there is obviously some tough choices that are going to be made down the road because we're not going to see increases in defense spending. I think that Congress is going to have to act on base closing commission in my view because of the imbalance between the support structure and the fighting forces, and I think we need to also make it clear that we should do this depot maintenance thing in what saves the taxpayer the most money, but I think that Sec. Cohen is off to a good start, and he is going to have to make some more tough decisions, but he recognizes it's going to have to be done in partnership with the Congress.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Senator McCain, you said--I believe you said in the hearings today that you're concerned the armed forces envisioned under the Quadrennial Review force will not be adequately equipped to carry out our strategy. What did you mean?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Well, I see a derogation in readiness. I see us losing many of our outstanding young pilots. I see the operations tempo keeping these young men and women away from home for an inordinate length of time, which has an impact on morale and readiness. And at the same time as you saw in the earlier clip, our modernization of the force has dropped by over 60 percent. So I believe that we are facing some significant difficulties which are going to--as I mentioned earlier--are going to force some more hard choices.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay. We'll come back to that in a minute. Senator Levin, what's your view? Do you think that this is the right blueprint?

SEN. CARL LEVIN, [D] Michigan: I think it's a fair start on a blueprint. Again, we ought to remember this is just a starting point. This isn't the finishing point. There's a citizens panel, as you mentioned, which is going to take a look at it. There were very few major changes in this blueprint, and that surprised a number of people, including myself, who expected a few more major changes either in force structure, there were no major changes, same number of divisions, same number of air wings, no major weapons systems terminated, for instance, but, nonetheless, I give Sec. Cohen a lot of credit. He jumped into the middle of this thing. He's only had a few months, and I think he's done a good, comprehensive job of at least looking at the various problems, even though he did not recommend a number of major changes, and that puts more pressure on our panel, the national citizens panel, to take a creative look. But Congress has got some obligation here too, as Sen. McCain is the first to point out. I mean, we can't ask the Pentagon to be creative or that citizens panel to be creative if we ourselves are unwilling to look, for instance, at another few rounds of base closings. Sure, they're painful, but we've got more structure than we need. We've had 35 percent reduction in the number of personnel but only a 20 percent reduction in the number of bases, so we've got to close some more bases if we're going to have the money to do the kind of modernization which we need and which Sen. McCain also pointed out.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Sen. McCain, you mentioned the problems you see. You talked about the readiness problems. This is something you've been worried about for some time, so this proceeds this review, but in your--in your view, the report doesn't deal with it properly, is that right? And describe what you mean too by the readiness problem.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Well, as I say, you know, for example, our peacekeeping missions are an enormous drain. Last time I heard I think it was around 8 billion, is that right, Carl, for the Bosnia effort? That all comes out of defense. The young men and women that we have are staying longer and longer overseas in the operations away from their homes and families, so at the same time we have not made some of the tough decisions. For example, I think when I talk about tough decisions, we now are looking at three fighter aircraft in the future, the Air Force one, the Joint Service one, and the Navy one. At some point I believe we're going to have to cancel one of those, but--

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Rather than just diminish them as the review recommended.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Exactly. Exactly, because, Elizabeth, as you know and we all know, when you reduce the number that you acquire, you increase the unit cost dramatically to the point where it becomes--suffer what we call sticker shock. But I think, as Carl said, that Sen. Cohen laid out some markers and some challenges for the Congress and for the Defense Department, and we're going to have to make some of those very difficult decisions. But right now, for example, reductions in the Guard and reserve forces, which Sen. Cohen is advocating, are going to cause a lot of squawking from governors and from legislators and members of Congress. So I think he took some first steps but there's a rough road that lies ahead of us.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Sen. Levin, what about that? Do you think that the cuts in, for example, the reserves and also the cuts in the active duty forces, reserve and also civilians, are also properly laid out in this report?

SEN. CARL LEVIN: We have to be willing to look at all of these cuts and even more so in my opinion if we're going to modernize enough to make sure that whatever size force we have in the future has got absolutely the best equipment possible. I think there are a number of other assumptions which we have to challenge, including we have to be able to fight two major regional wars at one time, or nearly at one time. I mean, Iraq is half of the power that it used to be. We pre-positioned equipment there, and hopefully, Saudi Arabia has learned some things from the Gulf War, so I think there are certain assumptions in this Quadrennial Review which really require some scrutiny.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Sen. McCain, what about that, the view that's in the report that we have to fight two regional wars?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Well, first of all, I think it's a false assumption, because we certainly can't along the lines that we could several years ago, and we all know that. So it's kind of the emperor has no clothes kind of a situation, but second of all, the threats, as Carl mentioned, have diminished in some respects, but they have increased in others, in my view. For example, the emergence of China as not an adversary but certainly worsening relations, which is possible, is something that we have to take into consideration, but I really believe that there are going to be the tough decisions that lie ahead of us, and if Sen. Cohen had made some of those very tough decisions now, he may have had difficulty getting very modest proposals through, which I think he has a good shot at getting done.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: So I'm interested that you both see this as an--as a first step; that it's a good first step. Let me ask you both, starting with you, Sen. Levin, what happens next? How does Congress now shape this in a way that you, for example, would like it to be shaped? What happens next?

SEN. CARL LEVIN: Well, first, we need to know from them what do they recommend in terms of implementation in this year's budget because it's unclear as to whether or not any pieces of this Quadrennial Review are going to be translated into our current budget discussions on this upcoming defense bill. So that's No. 1. Secondly, I think we ought to--we're going to have to act immediately on base closing. If there's going to be another round of base closing in 1999 and a second additional round in 2001, we must act this year to do--to put that in motion. And that's going to be one of the most contentious issues. And we have to resolve that in this year's budget. So there are some pieces of this Quadrennial Review which we should be debating promptly and then other parts the citizens panel will be giving us recommendations in December and as to the excess infrastructure and the excess overhead which we have, the large amount of support forces that we have compared to the combat forces that we have. Sec. Cohen has put into place another panel which is going to give us recommendations on that hopefully in time for this year's budget consideration.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Sen. McCain, still on that subject, what happens next, where do you think we'll be a year from now on this?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: What I hope a year from now is we've had the base closing evolution in motion, also we have done away with this arcane requirement that a certain amount of work be done at military depots, which is far more expensive than contracting out to some civilians, which is an enormous drain. I also hope that we will have reduced the civilian side that Sen. Cohen addressed today in the Defense Department which has, by the way, been cut very small, very lightly as compared with the uniform military, and I hope that we have now--will know a year from now a little more about these three tactical aircraft as to which is the best path for us to proceed in, and all of those will be very difficult.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: So you predict in the months to come a lot of debate over this. On your side of the aisle, are Republicans fairly united about these issues?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Look, I don't like to be too hard on my colleagues, and sometimes I am, and I admit to being guilty of that, but I see a degree of parochialism here as far as some of these reductions and cutbacks and resistance to base closing when the numbers are obvious that makes me sometimes a little embarrassed because we've got to appeal to acting in what's good for the nation, rather thanwhat's good for Arizona or Michigan.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Sen. Levin, how about your side of the aisle, is there some agreement on the future of the military?

SEN. CARL LEVIN: There will be a healthy debate, I think, but in addition to making sure that we act out of the national interest and not of a parochial interest and Sen. McCain has been really a fighter and very strong voice in terms of the need to do that, and I commend him for it, we've got to put some real pressure on allies. They have a responsibility here too, and they're downsizing dramatically, which would put pressure on us if we tolerate it, so we've got to--in the months ahead--let our allies in NATO and elsewhere know that we are going to expect that they're going to carry their share of the load. And that was not, I don't think adequately focused on either yet in this Quadrennial Review.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: I agree.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Sen. Levin and Sen. McCain, thanks for being with us.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Thank you.

SEN. CARL LEVIN: Thank you. FOCUS - LOSING GROUND?

JIM LEHRER: Now the impact of a federal court decision on affirmative action programs at the University of Texas. Betty Ann Bowser reports.

OSCAR DE LA TORRE: Why is that African-Americans and Mexican- Americans need affirmative action?

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Oscar de la Torre never misses an opportunity to talk to Texas teenagers about affirmative action.

OSCAR DE LA TORRE: How many of you have heard of Martin Luther King?

BETTY ANN BOWSER: He's one of eight children from a poor Los Angeles family and the only one of his siblings to graduate from college.

OSCAR DE LA TORRE: I am a product of affirmative action, and I'm proud to say that. Affirmative action gave me the opportunity to go to the university.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Like many of these youngsters, de la Torre did not do well on standardized tests in high school. But because of affirmative action he was able to get into college.

OSCAR DE LA TORRE: I'm a prime example of how affirmative action works. I was just allowed to come in and do my work but I had to do my work. It was sink or swim for me, and I think that I've been swimming up to now, and I continue to--I continue to do well in school--program--the program in place, affirmative action, has shown to be a benefit to people like me, people from my background.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Today, de la Torre is a graduate student at the University of Texas and holds a prestigious Woodrow Wilson fellowship, but he's concerned now about the future of affirmative action programs because a federal court has ruled that race may no longer be used as a factor for admission to the law school at the University of Texas. In 1992, David Rodgers and three other white students sued the law school because they didn't get in.

DAVID RODGERS, Plaintiff: I was discriminated against because of the color of my skin, and that's not right.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The case, Hopwood Versus Texas, was named for its only female litigant, Cheryl Hopwood. She and three other students claimed the law school was unfair because it allowed minorities to get in with lower test scores than whites. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. Then the Texas attorney general made the Hopwood decision apply across the board to all state- funded colleges, and he said those schools could no longer award scholarships based on race either. Law Professor Lino Graglia, a fervent opponent of affirmative action, applauded the court's decision.

LINO GRAGLIA, Law Professor: We have to be frank and candid. We only have affirmative action in institutions of higher education because blacks and Mexican-Americans are not academically competitive with whites. That's the situation.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Even before the Hopwood decision minority enrollment at the law school was low. Mexican-Americans accounted for only 4 percent of the school's 1400 students. African-Americans made up less than 3 percent. And campus-wide Mexican-Americans made up only 12 percent of the university's enrollment of 48,000 students in a state where the Mexican-American population is expected to exceed 50 percent by the year 2020. After the Hopwood decision, University President Robert Berdahl said he feared it would re-segregate the entire college population of Texas because he thought minority enrollment would nosedive.

ROBERT BERDAHL, University President: We know that in the competition for minority students. Universities have historically tried to offer incentives for them to come in the form of scholarships that were easier for minority students obtain. We now no longer can do that, and so we think we'll have fewer students who are able to come to the university because they've gotten better packages offered elsewhere.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: His fears became reality when the pool of applicants for admission was screened this spring by the staff of Dr. James Vick, vice president for student affairs.

JAMES VICK, University Vice President: We know that our minority applications have dropped substantially, approximately 25 percent from what they were last year, in spite of heavy recruitment and encouragement from our admissions staff and others who go into the community and encourage students to apply at the university.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Drama student Michael Washington decided he wouldn't go to UT. Washington is graduating with honors from high school in Plano, Texas. His sister, Audrea, has been attending the university on a $25,000 scholarship that was awarded on race and merit, a scholarship the university can no longer offer because of Hopwood. MICHAEL WASHINGTON: I was really interested in going because of their theater program, excellent training ground for teachers, but afterwards, it just didn't feel right. Something just didn't feel comfortable. It didn't feel safe. It didn't feel wanting or giving, and that's the kind of an environment I need to be in as an actor.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Most of the Mexican-American high school students in the group Oscar de la Torre addressed felt the same way. Cheerleader Gabriella Morena has a 3.7 grade point average but feels she still needs affirmative action to get into college.

GABRIELLA MORENA: It's not a handout. It's just like getting your foot in the door. It's an opportunity. It's definitely not a handout.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: So you're not even going to apply?

GABRIELLA MORENA: No, I don't really--I see UT in a different way basically, yes.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: And Peter Baez will be going to a private college on scholarship.

PETER BAEZ: I have an older sister who's in college and I have a twin brother who's going to college, so that plays an important role, plus with my dad trying to support us all, and that plays a big role, scholarship money.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Dean Vick says the university is doing all it can to encourage minority applications.

JAMES VICK: We will make every effort to recruit them. They somehow have the feeling that this decision is something the university has done in spite of the fact that the university opposed it in very strong terms, and we just have to overcome some of the perceptions that we are encountering.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But UT law professor Graglia has said that aggressive recruitment cannot overcome the disparity that exists in test scores between whites and minority applicants.

LINO GRAGLIA: What we're talking about are very large gaps if you apply the standards that you apply to whites to black and Mexican- Americans, very few of them would get into any selected institutions of higher education because very few of them are academically competitive.

SPOKESMAN: The fact is we have to do something now to--

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Senator Gonzalo Barrientos is leading a movement in the Texas legislature to increase minority enrollment and restore scholarship.

GONZALO BARRIENTOS, State Senator: 54 percent of the children in Texas elementary schools are minorities already. In ten to twenty years the majority of people in the state will be minorities. Those Texans have to be educated. Those Texans have to have jobs and pay taxes. Otherwise, we're not going to be able to compete with other states, with other countries.

SPOKESMAN: There being 26 ayes, five nays, House Bill 588 passes- -

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Earlier this month the legislature passed a race neutral bill that guarantees admission to any student in the top 10 percent of their high school graduating class. Rep. Frank Corte fought hard to defeat the 10 percent legislation in the House.

FRANK CORTE, State Representative: I think that what we're doing is we're telling students that, you know, don't worry about academic excellence, don't worry about doing well, because we're going to get you into school anyhow for whatever other reasons, and I think that's the wrong thing to do. I think that whether you're minority, Hispanic, you know, African-American, you know, abilities to get into college should be based on academic excellence.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Even supporters of the 10 percent legislation don't know if it will increase the number of minority students to pre-Hopwood levels. Sam Issacharoff, who defends the university in the Hopwood case, doubts that it will.

SAM ISSACHAROFF, Law Professor: If you want to have racial diversity in education, it's very difficult to achieve that without considering race. Take, for example, any other area of civil rights remedies, whether it's education, employment, housing, it's inconceivable that in any of those areas you would try to remedy a history of past exclusion without taking race into account.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But Barrientos says that the hostile attitude toward affirmative action made the 10 percent legislation the only possible solution.

GONZALO BARRIENTOS: Under the circumstances it appears to be that way. The majority of my colleagues in the Senate appear to have the thinking that they want to help kind of, and I would have some great bills but, frankly, they would vote against them.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: So this is the best you can do?

GONZALO BARRIENTOS: At this point in time.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: And the university's Dean Vick says the 10 percent solution poses other problems.

JAMES VICK: Our freshman class is 6,000. That's what it has been approximately, maybe a little smaller than that, over the last few years, and we feel like that's the size that we can handle and that we can provide a very solid education for that student population. The top 10 percent of high school graduates in the state of Texas would be 17,000 students. We would not be able to contain the size of our class if all of those students decided to come to the University of Texas.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Texas is not the only state seeing a significant drop in minority enrollment to public universities. In California, where the Board of Regents eliminated affirmative action on all the state's college campuses, the number of black students admitted to two of the state's biggest law schools dropped, at Berkeley, by 83 percent. FOCUS - SECOND-HAND RISK

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, secondhand smoke, a David Gergen dialogue, and a Roger Rosenblatt essay. Charles Krause has the smoke story.

CHARLES KRAUSE: For years scientists published data showing a direct link between cigarette smoking and heart disease. But does secondhand cigarette smoke also cause heart disease. New research published in today's issue of the journal "Circulation" strongly suggests that it does. Here to tell us about the link between secondhand smoke inhaled even by non-smokers and heart attacks is Dr. Ichiro Kawachi of the Harvard School of Public Health, the lead author of the new study published today. Dr. Kawachi, welcome.

DR. ICHIRO KAWACHI, Harvard School of Public Health: Good evening.

CHARLES KRAUSE: What are the principal findings of your study?

DR. ICHIRO KAWACHI: We followed a group of about 32,000 women over a period of 10 years to see whether passive smoking might increase the risk of heart attack. And basically we found that women who are regularly exposed in either the work or the home are at about double the risk for heart attack compared to those who are not exposed.

CHARLES KRAUSE: How did you find these women, and how did you monitor them?

DR. ICHIRO KAWACHI: Basically, we took advantage of a 20-year- long ongoing study of women, and about halfway through the study, we sent out a questionnaire asking them whether they were exposed to passive smoking in the home and in the workplace, and then we just sat and waited and saw what happened to them in terms of their heart attack rates.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Now how do your findings advance knowledge of the impact of secondhand smoke?

DR. ICHIRO KAWACHI: Well, there have been previous studies passing smoking and heart attack, but there have been two criticisms leveled at studies that have been done in the past. One is that they haven't asked about exposure in the workplace, and the second is that most studies have not adequately managed to take account of the whole range of other things that might otherwise explain the association. And we were able to address both of these weaknesses in our study.

CHARLES KRAUSE: For example, what other kinds of things might affect heart attack?

DR. ICHIRO KAWACHI: Well, aside from exposure to passive smoking, we asked about their diet, their fat intake, their exercise levels, family history of heart attack, whether they had high blood pressure or high cholesterol, their body weight and so on and so forth. And after taking account of all of these differences and comparing like woman with like, the only difference being that one group was exposed to passive smoking while the other was not, we still found that women exposed to passive smoking were at about twice the risk of heart attack.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Explain for us, if you would, the connection, or the medical connection between this passive smoke and heart attacks.

DR. ICHIRO KAWACHI: It used to be said when I was in medical school that if you can understand the effects of tobacco smoke on the cardiovascular system, you pretty much understand the whole cardiovascular system because the cocktail of chemicals, about 2,000 chemicals in tobacco smoke, initially does everything to the cardiovascular system. It directly damages the lining of the lining of the arteries. It reduces the capacity of the blood to carry oxygen to the tissues. It increases the stickiness of the blood, and so on and so forth, so we're saying that virtually everything that we know active smoking does to the circulatory system probably the same thing is happening to the bodies of people who inhale secondhand smoke.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Does your study--did you have any way of determining how long one would have to--how much secondhand smoke one would have to be exposed to, to have it be harmful to you?

DR. ICHIRO KAWACHI: That's actually the one question that I think needs to be looked at in more refined studies. We weren't able to precisely estimate just how much of a dose and how long one would have to be exposed to in order to get into increased--situations of increased risk, such as we observed. I think it's safe to say that knowing what is in tobacco smoke, any exposure is likely to constitute some measurable degree of risk. In other words, there are no known stage thresholds of exposure for most of the chemicals that we know are harmful in tobacco smoke.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Let me ask you a couple of questions about the methodology. Only women were involved in your study. Would the impact of secondhand smoke apply to men as well?

DR. ICHIRO KAWACHI: We see no reason why it wouldn't. The risks of heart attack among active smokers are pretty similar comparing men to women, and there have been previous studies that--of passive smoking and heart attack that did include men. And although they weren't able to control it for quite the range of things that we were able to, there's no reason to believe that the risks among men would be any different.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Now, another question is, as I understand it, the women involved in your study reported, in effect, on themselves, they answered questionnaires every so often, is that correct?

DR. ICHIRO KAWACHI: Yes. In fact, they answered the question about passive smoking at the beginning of the study in 1982, and their exposure status was self-reported. In other words, we believed them when they said that they were exposed to secondhand smoke. The thing that should be noted about that particular designed feature is that both of these things are likely to underestimate the true association between passive smoking and heart attack because since 1982, when the study began, Americans have been becoming less and less exposed in general because of rising standards of restrictions of exposure in workplaces. And that kind of things is, if anything, likely to underestimate the truth of smoking, passive smoking.

CHARLES KRAUSE: But at the same time, if you only asked them once and if you relied on their answers, I mean, isn't there the possibility that perhaps they were inaccurate or unreliable in some way that could affect the outcome of your findings?

DR. ICHIRO KAWACHI: I think most studies in the past which have done very careful measurements of saliva and urine to see whether people are really exposed when they said they were have found that people, in fact, vastly underestimate the amount of exposure. In other words, people are much more exposed to passive smoking than they think they are. And, again, that's a kind of a bias in the conservative direction. In other words, if you studied people as being not exposed when, in fact, they are, that's likely to result from the underestimate of the true association between passive smoking and disease.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Now you were quoted in the "New York Times" today as saying that if you extrapolated your findings, that as many as 50,000 Americans every year would have heart attacks because of secondhand smoke. How did you arrive at that figure?

DR. ICHIRO KAWACHI: Actually, they weren't arrived at by us but by independent researchers who published those estimates a couple of years ago. The surgeon general has estimated that approximately 3,000 Americans die each year from passive smoking, causing lung cancer. And these other researchers, Kyle Steinland and A.J. Reynolds among them, have estimated that if the association between passive smoking and heart attack is true, then up to 10 times as many Americans would die from heart attack. That is about 30,000 Americans each year.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Well, Dr. Kawachi, we'll have to leave it there, but I thank you very much for joining us. Thank you. DIALOGUE

JIM LEHRER: Now, a Gergen dialogue. David Gergen, editor-at-large of "U.S. News & World Report, engages Professors Charles Moskos of Northwestern University and John Butler of the University of Texas at Austin. They're the co-authors of All That We Can Be: Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way.

DAVID GERGEN: Gentlemen, welcome. Your new book says that a relentlessly negative picture of black America forms the premise for most racial discussions in these waning years of the 20th century, but there's one institution that's different, the U.S. Army. How is it different?

CHARLES MOSKOS, Co-Author, "All that We Can Be": It's different in several important ways. It's the only institution in American society where white people are routinely bossed around by blacks and where black leadership is very, very evident and well regarded. I mean, obviously, Colin Powell comes to mind, but I might add that 9 percent of all army generals today are black, as are approximately 1/3 of all first sergeants and sergeant majors. It's not utopia by any means. There are problems in the military. It's got racist in it, but in terms of any other institution one wants to compare it with, black leadership is far and away superior.

DAVID GERGEN: So if you're a young white man and enlist in the army today, you're likely to have a black superior.

CHARLES MOSKOS: Probably from the first day.

DAVID GERGEN: And that's a far--it's a far different army from what it was. I'm anxious to find out how did it come this far in terms of integrating blacks and whites and seeing so many blacks succeed.

JOHN SIBLEY BUTLER, Co-Author, "All That We Can Be": Well, first of all, the military has always had a black presence from the Revolutionary War. And then, of course, we had the desegregation of the military that really predated Brown Vs. Board of Education. So originally, we had a pool of people there to choose from. You couple that with the President being at the APECS, our commander in chief, to give an order to desegregate. Then it became interestingly clear that it would happen almost overnight. In addition to that, the military, has developed the whole idea that if you bring me a person, whoever it is, then I will make a soldier out of him. So it's a combination of the organizational structure, the historical participation of blacks in the military, and the willingness to say, we will essentially do this. And of course, the purpose of the military is to defend the country. We must say that, and excellent race relations is a byproduct of that overall mission.

DAVID GERGEN: But the Army also seems to have made some very subconscious decisions about how it will deal with the questions of affirmative action that bedevils so much of society. Can you tell us more about those?

CHARLES MOSKOS: It's really based on increasing the quality and qualification of the pool that's to be promoted. For example, if 10 percent of the lieutenants in the army are black, then the goal for the next promotion, which happens to be captain, would also be 10 percent. The figure is not based on some population numbers in a general society, or the total number of blacks in the system but on the pool that's qualified. We argue very strongly that's the sort of key, and we do think it has lessons for civilian society. The key is don't focus on white racism, which tends to be a kind of default for a lot of liberals; rather, focus on improving and increasing black opportunity channels. And the army has a series of programs like that, ranging from recruits to enter the military to lower ranking enlisted persons who become sergeants. And historically black colleges to produce officers were to be commissioned over half of the officers in the American army today- -by the way are products of historically black institutions. And there's another program, a so-called prep school that raises young men and women to be able to enter West Point, one of the most selective of all schools in this country.

DAVID GERGEN: They make an energetic effort to increase the pool of people who will be qualified by--both by reaching out and by training them so that they can meet the standards.

JOHN SIBLEY BUTLER: Right. Of course, the entire emphasis is on people who can do the job. And we call that, of course, the whole idea, supply side affirmative action versus demand side affirmative action. And the historical black schools have played an important role in that. So you don't see one walking around in the military and say that's an affirmative action officer, or that is an affirmative action general. I think the whole idea is that the relationship between standards and promotion and quality has been essentially maintained through bringing from the pool.

DAVID GERGEN: But, John Butler, you make the point in your book that they made a very strong effort not to do what many universities do. You teach at the University of Texas. Many other universities lower their standards in order to bring more minorities in. And your argument is they don't lower the standards in the army. Everybody has to get over the same bar. But they train them up to get over the bar.

JOHN SIBLEY BUTLER: Well, that's right, from those pools. And, of course, by concentrating on the focus, which is not only defense of the country but opportunity. One of the problems with many universities is that they concentrate on things like multiculturalism. Multiculturalism does not relate to opportunity, is something that churches should do and religion institutions should do, and looking at it overall. But the military concentrates on opportunities, so I would rather have 40,000 screaming white racists and 10,000 black students than 48,000 white students and 400 black students taking multi-culture courses.

DAVID GERGEN: But it's also true that one argument that comes from the left is the best way to get this done in society is to lower the bar and set special standards. You're saying--the other argument is--that comes from the right--and that is to be racially blind, you know, don't pay--you know, let's just take each individually, don't pay attention to race, and you're saying they don't do that either.

CHARLES MOSKOS: We call it not race blind but race savvy. Lowering the bar only buys short-term gains, and it results in long-term disaffection. The army took a lot of heat by not lowering the bar with racial problems in the late 70's and early 80's, but by not lowering the bar, everybody who does make it through the system is recognized as a qualified person. On the other side, about being race blind, that sounds nice in theory but, in practice, you have to be race savvy. You have a white first sergeant and a black company commander. That's okay. But if you have two whites or two blacks, you have to move people around. If a unit or a squad gets to be predominantly one color, it's going to take some adjustments. That's what we mean by race savvy. You cannot ignore it.

DAVID GERGEN: Bottom line, do you think is a successful approach to race relations?

CHARLES MOSKOS: We do think it's a successful approach to race relations. Obviously, there are different qualities in an army structure compared to most civilian structures, but there are some lessons that can easily be transferred.

DAVID GERGEN: Such as--

CHARLES MOSKOS: Well, one of the important lessons is that--that we know that as you increase the black proportion in an organization like the army, it can also increase the effectiveness of the organization. This runs against, I think, most civilian stereotypes. I think another lesson we'd also like to draw is that being a black--being an American are one and the same. These are not contradictory essences.

JOHN SIBLEY BUTLER: As a matter of fact, we call this Afro-Anglo culture.

DAVID GERGEN: Afro-Anglo culture.

JOHN SIBLEY BUTLER: And the whole idea is to pierce the ball, if you will, in the tribalism that is developing in America, and that whites are by definition part black culturally and blacks are by definition part white culturally. And the whole idea is to look at the shared things in terms of the movement of the country.

DAVID GERGEN: And you believe the army has done that more successfully.

JOHN SIBLEY BUTLER: I think the army has done that because it has the numbers to do it. If you look in the book, what white soldiers would say is that, yes, we're in the service, and being part black in the service is fine. I mean, they recognize the change in country, everything from the music that you hear, and this becomes pretty interesting.

CHARLES MOSKOS: We think that if all Americans can realize that the Afro-American part of our culture is part of our core, we think we would lance a lot of the boil and for a lot of blacks at the same time to realize they are part of our mainstream.

DAVID GERGEN: A brief question but a very important one: If the army ha been this successful on the race relations, why is it having so much trouble with regard to women in the military?

JOHN SIBLEY BUTLER: Well, I think that the gender issue is a different kind of issue. I don't think--first of all--that you can draw parallels from the race issue to the gender issue. I think when you say trouble, it is not trouble of opportunities, it is a trouble in terms of what people do and how people act. Now, in our book we say that you concentrate on black opportunity and forget about racism. I don't think you can say that in the gender reflex, because with gender you have the subordinate sexual kind of things that's going on, so I think that solving that problem, you've got to recognize different paradigms, and there's got to be--it's got to be seen in its own historical light. And let us also remember that 50 percent--almost 50 percent of women in the military are black, although when women are presented in the military, it's mostly female white face, so we're talking about opportunities for women in general.

DAVID GERGEN: I'll close on one personal note. You're both draftees, so you're both proud to have served in the army. One interesting difference is one of you is an affirmative action baby and the other one is--

CHARLES MOSKOS: And it's not the black one. I am the recipient of--beneficiary of affirmative action because I was admitted to Princeton University in the middle of the 1950's because they wanted somebody from New Mexico. I'm also the first in my family to finish secondary school, and John Butler--

JOHN SIBLEY BUTLER: I'm a fourth generation college graduate. I was expected to go to school. I'm from the State of Louisiana. I went to Louisiana State University, and my parents paid my way throughout my educational experiences.

CHARLES MOSKOS: And integrated LSU as well.

JOHN SIBLEY BUTLER: One of the first undergraduates.

CHARLES MOSKOS: So much for racial stereotypes.

DAVID GERGEN: Thank you both, John Butler and Charlie Moskos. ESSAY - GENERATION GAP

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight essayist Roger Rosenblatt considers today's generation gap.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: A word of affection for the current generation of young people, unthinkable, I know, to say anything kind about the young. At least, it has been unthinkable since the 1960's when youth was associated with abrasiveness. Young women screamed obscenities, young men grew beards. Don't trust anyone over 30; they did not. The corresponding reaction was that nobody over 30 trusted them. That, oddly, includes themselves, who are considerably over 30 now. A funny thing happened on the way out of the 60's: First, the kids hated their elders, then their elders hated them more. That sentiment did not go away, even after the Vietnam War did. Older people no longer like younger people, and they haven't liked them very much since. The in-your-face kids of the 1960's, the greed is good kids of the 1980's, what was there to like? The answer is much more than met the eye. But by 1970, the lines were drawn. Hardly all the kids of the protest years were unlikeable, and the kids of the 1980's were simply following a beckoning business boom. Now, in the 1990's, it is quite evident, if one bothers to look, that the crop of young people is both likeable and admirable. I get to see a fragment of this generation at Long Island University's Southampton College, where I teach writing. The students are bright and alert, so are most students, always and everywhere. What sets this generation apart is their decent modesty. They behold the future with respect and sensible caution. They favor order over chaos. They do not believe that the world was created for their entrance. Why is it important to notice this about them? Because young people need older people, it is ever so, and for the past 30 years older people have left the children high and dry. Time was when employers would seek new blood not solely to advance the company but to advance the young. There were proteges and apprentices and youngsters to take under your wing. Now, it is every fledgling bird for himself. See Dick and Jane try to find a place on the ladder. See them stride in well dressed fright along the avenues. Take an application. Don't call us. Youth is accepted as part of the economy, the lowest and most overworked part, but not as part of the country. Maybe the elders are too scared about their own mix to watch out for anyone else's, but then who are the young going to look to for help? A generation gap was perceived and institutionalized in the 1960's. Today the Gap is a clothing store, and the distance between generations is a chasm. The consequences are plain as daylight. Public education lies in ruins. Youth of every color, rich and poor, are neglected by their parents. More Americans than ever are choosing not to have children at all. Meanwhile, grown-ups wear jeans and tread the stair master in an effort to become the youth they ought to attend to. Bad policy, bad culture. A lot of fond attention is being paid us older folks these days; how spry we are for our ages, how agile our minds, how sound our health, how cosmetic our surgery. Nothing wrong in that, except it smacks of the same irritating self- consciousness we were attacked for ourselves when we were young. Out there these days too is a pleasant, worthy valuable generation of young people who are alone, wondering how to live in the world--like everyone else. I'm Roger Rosenblatt. RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Tuesday, the Senate passed a ban on the partial birth abortion procedure by a vote of 64 to 36. The House moved toward passage tonight of a compromised balance budget resolution worked out by President Clinton and Republicans. Democratic Leader Gephardt said he would oppose it, and the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee left interest rates unchanged. We'll see you on-line and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.