The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight coverage of the Salt Lake City Olympics investigation, some perspective on this year of devastating storms and other natural disasters, a report on the big layoffs at Boeing in Seattle, and a conversation about Cambodia with veteran foreign correspondent Henry Kamm. It all follows our summary of the news this Tuesday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: A special panel began its investigation today of charges bribes helped Salt Lake City win the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. The five-member commission was appointed by the U.S. Olympic Committee. Past and present officials of Salt Lake City's effort acknowledged they gave International Olympic Committee members gifts. College tuitions were also paid for some relatives of IOC officials prior to the site selection. Former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell heads the panel, which met today in Washington. He spoke to reporters after the session.

GEORGE MITCHELL: I don't know what the investigation is going to turn up. I do know what the allegations are. I do know what all of the press reports have been, but I don't think that it would be fair or wise for me or other members of this commission to at this point assume what the facts are going to be. We're going to look at it with an open mind; we're going to be as thorough as possible; we're going to try to be as fair as possible; but we're not going to pre-judge it.

JIM LEHRER: We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. There was more bad weather in the Northwest today. Heavy rains and melting snow triggered floods and mudslides in Oregon and Washington. Coast Guard boats ferried stranded residents to safety in Oregon. Flood warnings are up for parts of Washington State. Forecasters are calling for more rain in the area. In the Southeast thousands of homes and businesses remained without power. Virginia's power company said it expects to restore electricity to all of its customers by tomorrow. We'll review the year's weather-related disasters later in the program tonight. Overseas today four foreign tourists were killed in Yemen on the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula. Government officials said the victims and 12 other tourists had been taken captive by Islamic extremists. Security troops stormed the kidnappers' hideout only after they reportedly began shooting hostages. There were conflicting reports about the nationalities of those killed. U.S. officials said one American was seriously wounded. Two Chinese exiles living in the United States were captured in China and have been sentenced to three years at forced labor. The Chinese foreign ministry said today the three slipped into China seven weeks ago, hiding in a truck coming from Hong Kong. They were sentenced to the maximum term the police can order without a trial. Four other government critics received long prison terms in recent weeks in a crackdown on dissent. In Cambodia today two senior members of the Communist Khmer Rouge apologized for the regime of their leader, Paul Pot, in the 1970's. They asked their countrymen to let bygones be bygones. Both elders of the Khmer Rouge rebel movement defected to the government recently. Prime Minister Hun Sen said it might not be in the national interest to now try them for the death of some 1.7 million Cambodians in the 70's. One of the defectors said this:

DEFECTOR: Both of our compatriots understand that we have much more problem to resolve at present and in the future, and we have to forget the past.

JIM LEHRER: Author and New York Times Correspondent Henry Kamm covered the Khmer Rouge and Cambodia for many years. Terence Smith has a conversation with him later in the program. The House managers or prosecutors of President Clinton's impeachment trial met today. The 13 are Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee chaired by Congressman Henry Hyde of Illinois. One of their jobs is to decide how to present impeachment evidence to the Senate. They're expected to make that formal presentation next week. At the White House today the President offered a new initiative to increase penalties against child abusers. The plan would re-define murder to include the death of a child caused by a pattern of abuse and increase sentences for those who commit crimes in the presence of children. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the Salt Lake City Olympics story, the year of devastating weather, the layoffs at Boeing, and a conversation about Cambodia.

FOCUS - OLYMPIC INVESTIGATION

JIM LEHRER: Tom Bearden begins our coverage of the Olympics story.

TOM BEARDEN: Salt Lake City realized the fruits of years of lobbying in June of 1995, when the International Olympic Committee announced the host city for the 2002 Winter Games.

JUAN ANTONIO SAMARANCH, President, International Olympic Committee: (1995) The International Olympic Committee has decided to award the organization of the 19th Olympic Winter Games in 2002 to the city of Salt Lake City.

TOM BEARDEN: Salt Lake had been a first ballot winner -- beating out Quebec and cities in Sweden and Switzerland. Jubilant officials and residents celebrated at a huge outdoor rally. But in the last several weeks charges have been leveled that Salt Lake City officials bribed Olympic officials to get the games. Those officials have admitted giving four hundred thousand dollars in college scholarships to 13 beneficiaries, including six relatives of IOC members. Other members received gifts and free medical services. Four separate investigations are now underway. The ICO has ordered an inquiry, so has the Ethics Committee of the Salt Lake Organizing Group. Last week the U.S. Justice Department began its own review on whether federal tax and corruption laws were violated. And today, former US Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell launched an investigation on behalf of the United States Olympic Committee,

He promised a "thorough and prompt" investigation.

GEORGE MITCHELL: I entered this process with a completely open mind both as to the practices and standards which have been utilized in the past and those which ought to be utilized and part of our analysis and basis upon which our recommendations will be made will necessarily involve looking at

what has happened in the past -- what have been -- if any -- the standards, written or otherwise -- what have been the actual practices; how have they either complied with or been in violation of those guidelines.

The very purpose of the commission is to try to get the facts and to put them in some context for the U.S. Olympic Committee to try to help make certain that if, in fact, there were practices in the past which were inappropriate, we do everything we can to prevent them from occurring in the future.

TOM BEARDEN: The various Olympic committees looking into the matter are scheduled to complete their investigations within the next couple of months -- well before the start of the 2002 winter games.

JIM LEHRER: Now to two journalists who have been covering the Olympic story: Howard Berkes of National Public Radio, and Christine Brennan, who's also written two books on the Olympics and figure skating.

JIM LEHRER: Okay, Christine, first of all, let's try to understand some of the specific charges. College scholarships, these were given to people who were on the International Olympic Committee. Now how many people were on the committee, who actually make these decisions?

CHRISTINE BRENNAN, Sports Writer: There are 115 members, and they're from around the world, some of them are kings and queens and princes, literally Princess Anne, Prince Albert of Monaco. There are - I would call it actually the sports world's royal family. This is about as upper crust as it gets. And they make these decisions every few years to award the Olympic games to a city, winter or summer games. And these are the people who make these decisions.

JIM LEHRER: And these decisions are made way in advance, are they not?

CHRISTINE BRENNAN: That's correct - seven/eight years in advance. For example, in 1988, Atlanta received the nod from the US Olympic Committee, beating out Minneapolis. Obviously, Atlanta then had to go at it for a couple of more years against international competitors and then in 1990, 1990/1991, they received the nod from the IOC in a secret ballot to get the Olympics for 1996.

JIM LEHRER: Yes. Now, Howard, to you on the specifics here in Salt Lake City, they are accused of - the people in Salt Lake City are accused of, for instance, providing college scholarships to some of these - to relatives of members of the IOC. What's the nature of those scholarships?

HOWARD BERKES, National Public Radio: Well, we don't have very many details about that because the Salt Lake Olympic organizing committee still has withheld much of the information about this program, but what we do know is that over a period of seven years Salt Lake Olympic organizers paid out thousands of dollars in college scholarships to six relatives of IOC members; they put them through school -- through American University in the case of the daughter of one IOC member, through several colleges in Utah. The payments also included living expenses and books, and other things that were necessary for them to be in school.

JIM LEHRER: Now, there was also a very interesting story about medical expenses that were provided for members of the committee. Tell us that story.

HOWARD BERKES: Well, at least three people associated with the International Olympic Committee, either IOC members or their relatives, received as much as $30,000 in free medical care that was arranged by organizers of the Salt Lake Olympics. There were - we know specifically of three instances - again, we don't have the details on that - but in one case somebody received some cosmetic surgery; in another case some kind of operation on the knee or the thigh. And Olympic organizers went to local hospitals and doctors and said, for the sake of the Olympic bid we want you to do this for free.

JIM LEHRER: And you're talking about local - you mean in Salt Lake City?

HOWARD BERKES: Here in Salt Lake City.

JIM LEHRER: And they, in fact, did it?

HOWARD BERKES: And they did it.

JIM LEHRER: Yes.

HOWARD BERKES: And they did it.

JIM LEHRER: Now, Christine, you've been covering these Olympic stories for years. Is what Salt Lake City did unique?

CHRISTINE BRENNAN: I don't think so, and I think that's one of the key issues here as we look at this whole thing. I've covered the games since 1984, and really 1984 is the - is the watershed year, when the Los Angeles Olympics succeeded as they did, and you had this incredible big birthday party, celebration in the United States. All of a sudden, after the disasters with Munich, with the 11 Israeli athletes killed, and then with Montreal and a deficit I think they're still paying for now in Montreal, all of a sudden you have cities falling over themselves wanting the Olympic games. And what happened and what I've found over the years covering this is that these kinds of things, perhaps not to this degree, these kinds of things have been going on for quite a while. For example, a man in Manchester who ran the bid for Manchester, England, a bid that did not succeed in the year 2000, told me and told others, he said, he even knew the shoe size of the second daughter of one particular IOC member. What does that mean? That means they were giving out gifts constantly. You had situations where ICO members were able to pilot yachts - 38-foot yachts in Sidney Harbor. Obviously, this was well within the rules, so to speak, of the IOC -- $200 gift limit - but how do you rank price lists in the $200 gift limit area? And I think the reality is that this has been going on for a long time, Jim. I think - I don't think that Salt Lake City - while it is important that we look at Salt Lake City - they're going to say to a lot of people - is hey, we had to do this, and the ICO members who were taking the gifts obviously didn't blow the whistle; they took them.

JIM LEHRER: Yes. Howard, the attitude in Salt Lake City - I was reading about this today and some people were saying that Salt Lake City is actually a victim, rather than a perpetrator of this system, is that - how do you - is that how the people of Salt Lake City see it?

HOWARD BERKES: Well, actually, people in Salt Lake City don't quite see it that way. Some people, of course, here see that, as Christine described, that Salt Lake Olympic organizers had to do what other bid cities have done to win the games. Others, though, see it as Salt Lake City taking the low road, and violating not only the regulations of the International Olympic Committee that were in effect at the time but possibly the law in order to secure the games. What's important, though, at this moment is that the International Olympic Committee and the US Olympic Committee both have essentially said this is not Salt Lake City's fault; the fault does lie within the members of the International Olympic Committee who took it up on themselves to extract these kinds of gifts, to encourage them over the years, to seek them out. And it's quite clear that the International Olympic Committee and the US Olympic Committee puts the blame there and that the action that they will take will be focused on the members of the International Olympic Committee and establishing rules that will prevent this kind of thing in the future from that standpoint. There doesn't seem to be anyone interested in punishing Salt Lake City.

JIM LEHRER: Yes. Christine, it would seem then that it would be very easy to solve this problem if the people who are taking the - whether their bribes or favors - whatever they are - just refuse to take them and discourage them, the thing is over.

CHRISTINE BRENNAN: Absolutely. And obviously the IOC has to police itself, or at least that's what you would hope, but they haven't. And, in fact, they've been having their hands out saying give me more, give me more - golf at Augusta National from the Atlanta people - again a legal gift in that sense. I think what's going to have to happen -

JIM LEHRER: What were you talking about there, the Augusta - the people who on the IOC who were allowed to play golf at the -

CHRISTINE BRENNAN: At Augusta National - five members of the IOC went and played golf at Augusta National, the site of the masters, one of the hallowed grounds of golf, as part of Atlanta's bid at the time Atlanta was hoping that golf would be part of the Olympics, and one of the reasons they allowed this to happen is while they had to see the site, after all, make sure all 18 greens were up to Olympic standards. Of course, golf was not in the Olympics. What kind of perk was that? This again was legal. Atlanta was doing nothing wrong, but I think the point that needs to be made here is that Salt Lake City obviously, if alleged - what is alleged is true - Salt Lake City may have gone farther, but when you look at some of the things the IOC was expecting, was wanting, I would point my finger right at the IOC members, as a journalist looking at this, and ask them the question, why didn't you say, hey, we're getting this, we shouldn't be getting this, and my sense of it is that they cannot police themselves, but what we will see down the road is a commission perhaps ten/fifteen members, international - an international body of people outside of the Olympic world watching this very closely.

JIM LEHRER: What have the IOC members said, themselves, about all of this, other than to appoint the Mitchell Commission and other than that - and other things like that - what have they said and done?

HOWARD BERKES: Well, the individual members of the IOC, some of whom have been accused, deny the accusations. They're not saying much at all. The International Olympic Committee, the executive board of the International Olympic Committee, particularly Mark Hodler, who's the second most senior member of the IOC, Juan Antonio Samaranch, the president of the IOC, and Dick Pound, a vice president who's considered the heir apparent to Juan Antonio Samaranch, they all have spoken out. They generally have certainly condemned this kind of activity. They have launched their own investigation. What they're interested in doing it appears is taking away from the general membership of the IOC those 115 members, the ability to choose Olympic cities. They have talked about a process by which that would be - the Olympic cities would be chosen by the 11-member executive board. Juan Antonio Samaranch has tried this before and the IOC has voted it down. This may be the opportunity, though, with all the attention that is now focused on this scandal for the IOC to finally do this. And it may be a way certainly of controlling corruption; it may also be a way of consolidating power within the International Olympic Committee. It's a wieldy body with 115 people from all over the world who come from all kinds of cultures and who have different kinds of expectations, and in some cultures, the kind of favors that - exchange of favors that took place here is probably not inappropriate at all.

JIM LEHRER: And not considered bribes.

HOWARD BERKES: They're not considered bribery. Part of the way that business is done on an international level. I should point out that the Justice Department is investigating.

JIM LEHRER: Sure.

HOWARD BERKES: And there are federal laws that do forbid this kind of activity; whether this particular activity fits under those laws, that's what the Justice Department is figuring out. But there are federal laws that prohibit this kind of thing.

JIM LEHRER: Christine, what about the idea of removing the decision-making on where these games are from that big - the big committee - and that might solve the problem?

CHRISTINE BRENNAN: I think that's a great idea, and obviously it would also mean that the incredible dollar amounts - the estimated $30 million by the five or six cities going for the 2000 Olympics.

JIM LEHRER: $30 million?

CHRISTINE BRENNAN: Just to try to win the bid that city, Australia, eventually won -- $30 million - think where that money could go if they weren't busy wining and dining the ICO members and of course also building stadiums and beginning the process, but I think that's a great idea. The fact is that do all of these IOC members all have to go to all these cities and get the expensive hotel suites and go and play golf or do whatever they do, do they all have to do this? It seems again like it was Christmas morning every day of the year for the International Olympic Committee and from the standpoint of this opens the door and has us all look at it a little bit closer, journalists, as well as obviously some of the investigating bodies, that's probably a good thing.

JIM LEHRER: And as they say about this time of the year, Christmas may now be over.

CHRISTINE BRENNAN: I think it is officially over for the International Olympic Committee.

JIM LEHRER: Christine, Howard, thank you both very much.

HOWARD BERKES: Thank you, Jim.

FOCUS - YEAR OF DISASTERS

JIM LEHRER: This bad year in weather and to Phil Ponce.

PHIL PONCE: Mother Nature reeked havoc across the globe in 1998. Many experts call it one of the worst years ever for weather disasters. Early this spring in Indonesia and Malaysia, severe drought and dry, thinning rain forests called wildfires to spread. Hundreds of thousands of acres of forests were blackened by the blaze and smoke covered the countryside, prompting thousands of people to seek treatment for respiratory infections. In Western India last June a cyclone swept a half dozen villages in the western state of Gujarat into the sea. More than a thousand people were killed. Winds up to 65 miles per hour destroyed homes and cut communication lines. A month later, a massive tidal wave in Papua New Guinea killed at least 2,000 people. A 23-foot wall of water crashed into what used to be a string of fishing villages in this Pacific nation. In August, flooding on China's Yangtze River killed over 3,000 people, left 14 million homeless, and devastated at least 12 million acres of farmland. The price tag for China's worst flooding in more than 40 years is estimated at $30 billion. According to the World Watch Institute, that made it the costliest disaster of 1998. But there was more flood damage to come. Within weeks in Bangladesh, the rising Jamuna River caused the worst flood in that area's history. For two months 2/3 of Bangladesh as underwater; 30 million people were forced to leave their homes. And this year, hurricanes devastated countries in the Caribbean and Central America. Hurricane Georges' high winds and torrential rains left a path of destruction as it moved through both rich and poor areas of the Caribbean, including St. Kitts & Nevis, Anguilla, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Cuba's eastern coast. It moved north through the Florida Keys. But Hurricane Mitch was even bigger, the most destructive natural disaster in Central America's modern history. For five days torrential rains, flooding, and mudslides caused extensive damage in Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico. Nearly 2 million people were left homeless. In Honduras, officials said the economy had been set back 25 years. Closer to home, Canada and New England suffered from the worst ice storm on record. The freezing rain and severe cold caused at least 30 deaths and left close to 1 million people without electricity. The cost for the damage reached more than $3 billion. Florida suffered when it was hit with the deadliest round of tornadoes in history. Winds up to 260 miles per hour battered the central part of the state. At least 39 people were killed and hundreds injured. Neighborhoods and shopping centers were turned to rubble. Then last summer, with temperatures of more than 100 degrees, three separate forest fires burned out of control in Florida for weeks. Three hundred and fifty homes and businesses were destroyed, an estimated 500,000 acres burned. Thirty thousand people were forced to evacuate their homes. In September, Hurricane Bonnie, the first hurricane of the season, damaged the Florida Keys before it hit North Carolina, with 115 mile per hour winds. And Mother Nature made her presence known through the holiday as a pre-Christmas Eve ice storm froze the Southeast United States. Virginia was especially hard hit. Today more than 50,000 Virginia residents are still without heat or electricity. And in the Northwest driving rain and melting snow resulted in massive flooding and mudslides in Oregon and Washington State. It's the worst flooding in the region since 1996.

PHIL PONCE: Joining me now are Janet Abramovitz, senior researcher at the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental research organization; Bob Watson, director of the Environment Department at the World Bank; and John Clizbe, vice president of disaster services at the American Red Cross. Welcome all.

PHIL PONCE: Ms. Abramovitz, give us the big picture, in historical context, just how bad a year was it?

JANET ABRAMOVITZ, Worldwatch Institute: 1998 was a record-setting year for economic losses from weather-related disasters. Storms, floods, fires, and droughts caused at least $89 billion in damage worldwide this year. And to put that into some perspective, that exceeds the total for the entire decade of the 1980's. And it's far higher than the last record-setting year, which was only two years ago in 1996.

PHIL PONCE: And as far as the - some of the disasters worldwide that come to mind, which ones, in your opinion, were particularly significant?

JANET ABRAMOVITZ: Well, I think the lead-in story covered quite a lot of them. Hurricane Mitch, the Yangtze River floods, flooding in Bangladesh, the cyclones and floods in India, but it - this year, no region was untouched. We also saw earlier in the year massive forest fires in the wet tropical forests which had never burned before -- the fires in Indonesia, the fires in Brazil, and Mexico. There have been so many of these natural events this year that each one - we almost forget about the last one because we're now - we're moving on to deal with each and every one. So it's been a record-setting year for economic losses and, of course, the human devastation can't be underestimated either.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Clizbe, in the United States, what kind of a year was it in historical terms?

JOHN CLIZBE, American Red Cross: Well, unfortunately, it's a record-setting year in the United States too. For the American Red Cross it was easily our most demanding and literally our most expensive year in our 117-year history, including a period of time, a six-week stretch or so, in September or October or whatever we're dealing with, more large scale disasters simultaneously than we had ever faced in our history at the same time.

PHIL PONCE: And when you say most expensive, was there one disaster that was particularly costly?

JOHN CLIZBE: Yes. Hurricane Georges in Puerto Rico - particular the Puerto Rico portion of Hurricane Georges was the most expensive disaster in American Red Cross History.

PHIL PONCE: And why was it so expensive?

JOHN CLIZBE: Well, it was a very devastating storm; it really hit Puerto Rico hard, and most of the island was hit, and much of the inner part of the island, up in the mountains and the communities that sort of slid down the side of the mountains, much like what we saw with Hurricane Mitch in Honduras and Nicaragua, very similar kinds of things happened in Puerto Rico.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Watson, why was all this happening?

BOB WATSON, World Bank: Well, this year was clearly the hottest year on record, and the question is: Are these just natural events that occur every so often, or is it possible that we humans are slowly but surely changing the Earth's climate, and by changing the Earth's climate, we are seeing more of these very extreme events?

PHIL PONCE: And there was a lot of talk this year, obviously, about El Nino. I mean, at some point people seemed El Nino'd out. But a way to connect the dots, using that?

BOB WATSON: Well, the El Nino that we saw at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, it was clearly the most major El Nino of the last 150 years. It caused the massive floods in Peru, the droughts in Indonesia, but when - by the time we got to the very large floods in China and Bangladesh, they were not due to the El Nino event. What happened was we got some very, very unusual events where in parts of the Yangtze River we had 70 inches of rain in June and July, where you normally only get about 10 or 12. Bangladesh, 2/3 of Bangladesh was swamp. In a typical day one was getting five to ten inches of rain. And so we know that if you get a warmer world, there will be more very, very heavy precipitation events around the world, therefore, more floods and more droughts. And so one of the challenges is to find out if, indeed, we are changing the atmospheric composition, greenhouse gas, will it lead to more El Nino events, and, if so, we'll see more of these drastic floods, drastic droughts, forest fires, et cetera, throughout the world, unfortunately.

PHIL PONCE: And just a very quick reminder of what El Nino was - it's the warming that happens occasionally in the Pacific that warms the air and cancause extremes in weather.

BOB WATSON: That's right. It's the ocean off of Peru and Ecuador warms up - last year, it was as much as 5 degrees warmer than normal. And when that happens, you change all the precipitation patterns around the world, and especially in the tropics and subtropics. So, areas that have gotten normally fairly dry become very, very dry. Peru became extremely wet. And so what you see is very, very drastic changes in precipitation events, as well as temperature.

PHIL PONCE: And without making this a debate about global warming, what is the latest evidence on that?

BOB WATSON: Well, there's no question - we are changing the atmospheric composition of greenhouse gasses - there's no doubt that the Earth's surface temperature is warming. This year is probably the warmest year on record. Last year was the previous warmest, and so the question is, the bulk of scientists do believe that we humans are slowly but surely changing the Earth's climate, and this could have profound effects on agricultural productivity, sea level rise, and on natural ecological systems.

PHIL PONCE: Ms. Abramovitz, going back to the events of this year, the weather was the natural event, but were there things that humans did that sort of exacerbated things?

JANET ABRAMOVITZ: Yes, absolutely. I think we can see the hands of man in many of these disasters. Hurricane Mitch, for example, hit a region that was ecologically and socially very vulnerable. Honduras, for example, has lost 2/3 of its forest cover, including much of the forest cover in the Tegucigalpa watershed, and Central America has some of the highest rates of deforestation in the world, likewise in the Yangtze River Basin; 85 percent of the forests have been lost, the lakes, the wetlands have been lost, and the rivers heavily dammed, and what happens is that without tree cover to hold the soil in place, when the rains come, they can't be absorbed into the land, and they go racing across the land, carrying mud and debris with it, filling up the rivers, gaining force as they go downstream, particularly when rivers are constricted, as many of the rivers in the world now are, and you have these sorts of events. On top of that, people are also settling in vulnerable areas, in coastal areas, in river flood plains, on steep hillsides, and so more people are in harm's way, and there's more harm to be done because of land use changes that have made the planet less resilient to withstanding these kinds of natural disasters. So, we've turned what otherwise would be a natural disaster into something -

PHIL PONCE: I mean, Mitch would have been horrible notwithstanding any of those things that you described.

JANET ABRAMOVITZ: Absolutely. Absolutely. But when you have a foot or two of rain every day, it's going to be a bad situation. But if you have bare hillsides and people living on bare hillsides, it's going to be a decidedly unnatural disaster. And I think we're in for more of these sorts of things in the future if we continue down the same path. Now, luckily, some governments have begun to recognize this. The Chinese government early in the Yangtze River flood said, no, this is a completely natural disaster. Later, they changed their story, and - and admitted, in fact, that it did have a large measure to do with deforestation, and then enacted a logging ban and have begun reforestation efforts.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Clizby, in this country have people learned some lessons from what happened?

JOHN CLIZBE: Some. But probably not enough. The American people have - bless their hearts - have a propensity for living in disaster-prone areas.

PHIL PONCE: For example -

JOHN CLIZBE: Well, about 40 million people in the United States live in high-risk disaster areas, in earthquake-prone areas along the Southeastern coasts that are hurricane prone, so we're very vulnerable, and that certainly showed itself this year. Many - not all - but many of the significant disasters that happened this year were, in fact, in areas that are disaster-prone, and we know it.

PHIL PONCE: Would you put the flooding that took place in Texas -- Del Rio area in that category?

JOHN CLIZBE: Well, I think that was a surprise, I think, to many of the people in Texas. But Texas experienced severe floods this year, and I think in Del Rio felt that they were living in a safe area. It was a torrential rain and a flash flood that just caused unspeakable devastation very, very suddenly, but I think certainly - I think something like 80 percent of the population of Florida lives within 20 miles of a coast, so certainly Floridians are in vulnerable locations; all along the southeastern part of the United States, there's vulnerability. On the other hand, I think people are learning - in the United States there are decreasing numbers of deaths with disasters, and I think it's because we are getting better at mitigating to some degree; people are learning some lessons; and the Red Cross has found one of the things we've learned is we need to start working with communities and families to help them prepare so that they can head off some disasters better.

PHIL PONCE: Now, you actually make visits to places where disasters happen. What are the images that will stay with you from this year? What things come to mind?

JOHN CLIZBE: I think for all the statistics, I think what really strikes me increasingly is that every disaster is a personal disaster for a family or individual. If it's a single family in the middle of Kansas with a tornado or homes sliding off a side of a hill in Puerto Rico or whatever, it really boils down to people being hurt. And I think the emotional devastation, the emotional toll is often as great as the physical toll, and I can vividly picture - in Spencer, South Dakota, two things strike me: one, a community totally wiped out as if the tornado decided to come down to hit that six- or seven-square block area and then lift off the ground again. And at the same time, I remember seeing two men sitting on a pile or rubble with their arms around each other, obviously suffering with what they've gone through. Del Rio, that you mentioned, I can remember seeing the families that were impacted by what had been - what had just suddenly come upon them in a very unpredictable kind of way, or the families in Florida, and Alabama and Georgia, that went through the tornadoes that were there. I think it's - sometimes I think we can get preoccupied - I can get preoccupied with sort of the numbers and the scales and the scope and - it's been a major challenge for us and the Red Cross, but I think what strikes us we have to keep getting better and better at working and serving individual families and people.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Watson, how about in parts of the world where the resources might not exist that exist in the United States, is there - if there is a will, are there the means to sort of make better - build better buildings, build communities out of harm's way?

BOB WATSON: Our challenge now is to help prepare developing countries for these natural disasters. Too often we respond to a natural disaster. But we're making major progress in how to predict hurricanes. That's why we don't see the loss of life in the U.S.. We have to use that same technology in developing countries. But even more with El Nino, we can now forecast six to nine months in advance when we're going to see an El Nino. So we can help to reduce the human devastation. If it's going to be drier in some areas, we can help the farmers decide what plants to crop. If it's going to be drier, we can work with the water resource managers, so we don't see these massive hunger and famine events that we're seeing. If it's going to become very wet, we are going to work with the farmers, work with the water managers. In addition, we can also work with the infrastructure, better roads, better bridges, to reduce this threat, so I believe science is moving us in a direction where while we cannot avoid the disaster, we can be better prepared, we can reduce some of the human misery, and some of the economic costs, and the World Bank is working with many of our client countries, and we want to be there before the event, rather than after the event.

PHIL PONCE: And at this point, very quickly, the ability to predict?

BOB WATSON: As I say, hurricanes we can predict very well now. We have to use that same technology for other countries, such as Bangladesh, India, China, and we can predict the El Nino event, which is precipitation, mainly changes, drier or wetter, probably six to nine months in advance.

PHIL PONCE: Well, that's all the time we have. I thank you all very much.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the layoffs at Boeing and a conversation about Cambodia.

FOCUS - SLOWING DOWN

JIM LEHRER: Rod Minott of KCTS-Seattle reports the Boeing story.

ROD MINOTT: In early December, Boeing made the stunning announcement that it would eliminate 48,000 jobs over the next two years. That's 20,000 more than what the company had said it would cut last summer. The loss of jobs will reduce Boeing's work force by 20 percent. Workers coming off the day shift at the 737 plant near Seattle blamed senior management for causing the layoffs.

GRAY RUSSROCK, Boeing Machinist: They're supposed to be getting six figures a year. They're supposed to be planning ahead 15 years. What the hell did they do? So who gets to keep their job? The guys at the top get to keep their jobs, the guys at the bottom, we go out.

ROD MINOTT: Machinist Anthony Carson said the news hit workers hard.

ANTHONY CARSON, Boeing Machinist: Morale is like - it's kind of - it's very low at this point - it's very low, because you don't know if you're going to have your job the next day so your clarity is gone, so it's kind of tricky at this point because people are trying to base things off a day-to-day life and it's kind of hard to do when you have a house payment and have a car payment.

ROD MINOTT: Boeing management blames the layoffs on the economic crisis in Asia. Alan Mulally heads the commercial airplane division.

ALAN MULALLY, President, Boeing Commercial Airplane Division: Approximately 25, 28 percent of our total airplane production output goes to Asia, and so the concern that we have, of course, is that our production looks very solid for 1999, but this worsening situation of the economies in Asia will decrease the need for new airplanes, especially in the year 2000 and 2001.

ROD MINOTT: The economic turmoil has caused many Asian airlines to cancel or delay plane orders from Boeing. Jin Cho is with Asiana, a South Korean airline that recently cut back its Boeing 747 flights from Seattle to Seoul.

JIN CHO, Asiana Airlines: Yes, we have been cutting back on flight schedules because we sawed off a couple of planes to reduce the - I think - short-term debt to make our accounting book a little better.

ROD MINOTT: Most of the production cuts will hit the 747 jumbo jet, Boeing's most profitable plane. The company plans to reduce production from about three 747 planes a month to two at the end of next year. Manufacturing could drop as low as one 747 every month in the year 2000 if market conditions worsen. Airline industry analysts say both Boeing managers and the Asian crisis are to blame for the company's woes. Some also cite fierce competition with AirBus, the European consortium that also manufacturers commercial jets. According to University of Washington economist Charles Hill, aggressive rivalry with AirBus led Boeing to seek record sales at unprofitable prices.

CHARLES HILL: They have this notion that they have a God-given 60 percent of the market and they were going to get that 60 percent of the market, whatever it took, and if that took deep discounts on the prices of planes, they were going to do it, if that took accelerated deliveries, they were going to do it.

ROD MINOTT: The aggressive marketing paid off. Boeing doubled its production within the last two years. But Hill says the company wasn't equipped to handle it all. Some customers complained of delayed deliveries and even poor workmanship on jets.

CHARLES HILL: So they basically met their delivery schedule by hiring far more people than they historically would have done, but as a result of aggressively going after market share, they suddenly found they had to produce far more planes than they thought they would have to do in a very short space of time, before they'd fully implemented their manufacturing process improvements.

ROD MINOTT: Tim Goree was one of those workers brought on to help Boeing get through its production crunch. Last September, he'd been hired to help assemble wings on the new 777 wide-body jet. With no seniority, he was laid off after working at Boeing for only three months.

TIM GOREE: I was shocked. The main thing going through my mind was what am I going to do for the bills. Well, I heard rumors before we actually got our warn notices, but I really didn't think that I was going to be affected in the first round.

ROD MINOTT: Goree claims Boeing told him that he would have a job for at least two years. Now he worries how $360 in weekly jobless pay will cover his family's expenses.

TIM GOREE: We're not financially set. You know, we don't have a savings account. We've been living week to week, you know, paycheck to paycheck, and four kids and a house payment, and everything, it's pretty tough, you know, especially now that I don't know where the money's going to be coming from.

ROD MINOTT: Boeing says it's facing tough economic times too. Its share of new orders for commercial aircraft has shrunk to 50 percent in the face of competition with AirBus. In addition, the aerospace giant had to deal with the economics of a huge merger with McDonnell-Douglas last year. The company also posted its first annual loss in 50 years in 1997. Economist Hill says Boeing has to become more efficient in order to become more profitable.

CHARLES HILL: If you look at productivity at AirBus, it takes 143 employees to build an aircraft at AirBus; it takes 216 employees to build an aircraft at Boeing. That's a very compelling statistic. That tells you something about the belt of efficiency of these two operations at this point in time.

ROD MINOTT: Boeing's Alan Mulally, who heads the commercial plane division, points out that the company has, in fact, started implementing changes to beat the profit problem. He says Boeing is becoming more efficient in its manufacturing and remains on schedule to deliver a record number of jets next year.

ALAN MULALLY: We have a commitment to deliver the 620 airplanes next year. That looks really good. The airlines want them. We're getting the airplane's production system back in sequence where it's getting healthy again. We're delivering airplanes, we're producing the airplanes. When we said we were going to make them, the quality of the airplanes gets better every day with every airplane, so the whole team has rallied around getting our production health back from this tough situation we've been. I think that through '99 and going forward, I think it'll give us a good base to get back to a - you know - a profitable and a healthy Boeing.

ROD MINOTT: Meantime, economist Dick Conway thinks the Seattle area will weather the blow of the Boeing layoffs because its economy is more diversified than in the past.

DICK CONWAY: Back in 1970, when Boeing also had about 100,000 workers in the area, the company accounted for about one in three jobs in the entire economy here. Today, it's closer to one in six jobs. That's why we figure that we're better able to withstand a Boeing downturn - quite apart from the fact that the anticipated cutbacks at Boeing are quite a bit less than they were back in 1970.

ROD MINOTT: But airline analysts say it could take up to five years for Boeing to rebound. They say for Boeing to survive, it must become more efficient and in the future, that will mean building jets with far fewer workers.

CONVERSATION

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight a conversation about Cambodia. More than a million citizens of that Southeast Asian nation died during the reign of the Khmer Rouge government in the late 1970's. Today Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen welcomed home two former Khmer Rouge leaders and said it was time to bury the past. Terence Smith recently recorded this conversation about Cambodia.

TERENCE SMITH: After nearly 30 years of war and turmoil, Cambodia today is crippled nation. An American journalist who has charted that country's decline has written a powerful new book, "Cambodia, Report from a Stricken Land." He is Henry Kamm, a Pulitzer Prize winning former foreign correspondent for the New York Times. And he joins us this evening.

TERENCE SMITH: Henry, welcome.

HENRY KAMM: Hello, Terry.

TERENCE SMITH: A little full disclosure I think is necessary here. You and I have worked together.

HENRY KAMM: A good deal.

TERENCE SMITH: Have been friends together and worked together, including in Southeast Asia.

HENRY KAMM: Including in Southeast Asia and the Middle Eastern war at one point.

TERENCE SMITH: Tell me. Describe for me what Cambodia was like - when you first went there nearly 30 years ago.

HENRY KAMM: When I first went there, Cambodia was an - I suppose it's a clich to say - an island of peace in wartorn Indochina. It was an - and its capital was a very well tended city of broad avenues, lovely parks, and, above all, smiling faces and nowhere a threat of a grenade to bring thrown to break up that.

TERENCE SMITH: Right.

HENRY KAMM: It was pleasant.

TERENCE SMITH: It was an exquisite place.

HENRY KAMM: Yes.

TERENCE SMITH: And today?

HENRY KAMM: Today, Cambodia is a country that remains devastated by the various wars that have been waged in this territory. Its roads are in horrid condition. Its cities have become -- and there are many, as you know - cities have become overcrowded, overrun by rural populations in search of something better than the totally impoverished life. Instead, they find in the cities an equally impoverished life - no employment - and, above all, they find - wherever they are - city or countryside -- they find a government that shows not a smidgen of interest in their well-being.

TERENCE SMITH: You write, in fact, of rural people, ordinary Cambodians, who have flocked to the cities, living - what you describe as an essentially rural life in the streets of Phnom-Penh.

HENRY KAMM: Yes. Right.

TERENCE SMITH: What do you mean?

HENRY KAMM: Rural life would mean that you do not find your place in the city. Your place begins with employment. It goes through steady, permanent housing of some kind; it goes with schools that are ready to receive your children and it goes with the minimal services that, above all, medical services, that simply are not available.

TERENCE SMITH: And you talk about them tending livestock, chickens, and what not, on the streets.

HENRY KAMM: They bring with them what they can because the city offers them almost nothing. And so, yes, there are chickens; there are pigs; and occasionally even a buffalo walking down the main street.

TERENCE SMITH: You know, the most recent reports from Cambodia might suggest a reason for hope. The last known group of Khmer Rouge guerrillas recently surrendered. And now for better or for worse there is an ostensibly united government under Hun Sen that seems to have the blessing of King Sihanouk. Are these hopeful signs?

HENRY KAMM: They are signs that are significant to the .1 percent of the Cambodians who share in power. They are of no significance to the 99.9 percent who have power exercised upon them. The surrender of the Khmer Rouge was a dead body that has now -- one supposes been finally buried. But they have been of no importance in Cambodia, thank goodness, for the last two years. The election merely ratified a totally irregular state of affairs that existed before, namely that Hun Sen, who was put in power by the Vietnamese invasion that took place in 1979, and who never throughout the various exercises of politics that have occurred in Cambodia since then, particularly the large United Nations' $2 billion enterprise that was supposed to bring peace, happiness to the Cambodians -- he maintained power throughout this - he lost the UN-sponsored elections in 1993, but bludgeoned his way into power, into a share of power. He gave to Sihanouk's son, Prince Ranariddh the title of First Prime Minister but the title of First Prime Minister is about as meaningful as the notion of democracy in Cambodia. It was Hun Sen and his machine, which has run Cambodia since then. In the middle of last year he got tired of having even this advertising sign of democracy, Ranariddh, with him in sharing power, and threw him out in the coup de tat, drove him out of the country. This was not accepted by the international community. It's very difficult to accept the overthrow of a regime that the entire world sponsored into office. And so a compromise had to be arranged, and since Prince Ranariddh likes power and money as much as Hun Sen does, he accepted once more a place in this new regime. But this is of no meaning to the people of Cambodia. Hun Sen will continue to rule with an iron fist.

TERENCE SMITH: And King Sihanouk, formerly Prince Sihanouk, the man who kept the balancing act going for so many years?

HENRY KAMM: The man who did a splendid job until he was - there were many flaws -- but the essence was that Sihanouk until 1970 -- until his overthrow - kept Cambodia out of war. But since then he has grown aged, he is very ill with cancer, and his power is like the Pope's; he has no armies. And so he has to consent to whatever is offered to him in order at least to remain king and possibly try with the very little power that he has to prevent the worst. I think that he knows that he is doomed not to succeed in that.

TERENCE SMITH: You know, you mentioned earlier the $2 billion effort -

HENRY KAMM: Yes.

TERENCE SMITH: -- by the United Nations in the early 90s to come in to impose a cease-fire and to hold elections.

HENRY KAMM: Right.

TERENCE SMITH: For a while it seemed to be a great success story and was pointed to that way. But, in fact, that is not the case, is it?

HENRY KAMM: It was painted as a great success because the United Nations did a rather clever trick. The Paris agreement under which they came into Cambodia to pacify it and to hold elections was meant to pacify it, and all of the parties in the Cambodian conflict signed on to a surrender of their military. The Khmer Rouge were the first ones to resent - to refuse to give up the power; therefore, all the others followed suit, and so an agreement that was supposed to bring peace and to demilitarize Cambodia was never respected, and then the United Nations sort of hid this away and said the purpose was to hold free elections. These elections were held, but, again, their result was vitiated.

TERENCE SMITH: What does it say to you, who've traveled the world widely and seen UN efforts elsewhere, what does it say about the limits of this kind of UN intervention?

HENRY KAMM: It's not entirely the United Nations' fault. It's the fault of the major powers who bring about UN resolutions and make UN decisions. The major powers raised no objection when this United Nations-sponsored agreement was totally ignored really and not really applied.

TERENCE SMITH: You speak in your book of a country beyond helping itself and have a suggestion at the end about what might be the answer.

HENRY KAMM: It is less than a suggestion, Terry. I feel that the Cambodian elite, the Cambodian political elite, which is greatly diminished by both the murders by the Khmer Rouge, the savageness of the war that preceded, and the great flow of emigration from Cambodia of some of its best people -- that the present elite, the present holders of power, who are really interested only in the holding of power - in the profits that this puts into their pockets -- that these people are quite incapable and totally uninterested in advancing the state of the Cambodian people. And since I see no change possible within this elite now, it seemed to me - and it is not a suggestion because it's too fanciful to be taken seriously - but it seems to me that if there is to be hope for Cambodia, it would be to put this brutally misruled country in the hands of some benevolent, uninterested, impartial force -- use this power to allow a new generation of Cambodians to develop normally in a country in which they're not being brutalized by their government, and when this new generation which recognizes the responsibilities of an elite for the fate of a nation is ready to take over the country, then by all means the country should be taken over by the Cambodians.

TERENCE SMITH: A trusteeship, it sounds like.

HENRY KAMM: A form of trusteeship, but an honest form of trusteeship, totally untainted by any thought of neo-Colonialism. I think Cambodia should live under its own leadership by its own devices. I regret to say that I do not think it is capable of doing so today.

TERENCE SMITH: As you suggest at the end of the book, it may be unrealistic, but it is not unreasonable.

HENRY KAMM: It is realizable theoretically. I doubt that the will exists to realize it, but I will be delighted to see it realized.

TERENCE SMITH: Henry Kamm, thank you very much.

HENRY KAMM: Thank you.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Tuesday, a formal bribery investigation began of Salt Lake City's selection as the site for the 2002 Winter Olympics; the House managers or prosecutors of President Clinton's impeachment began preparing for a Senate trial; and heavy rains and melting snow triggered floods and mudslides in Oregon and Washington State. We'll see you on-line and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.