The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

INTRO

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. The Pentagon's own investigation of the Beirut truck bombing is said to fault Marine commanders. We examine where this leads. And as events at year's end raise questions for Washington at the United Nations, we talk to U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. Jim Lehrer is off; Judy Woodruff's in Washington. Judy?

JUDY WOODRUFF: Also tonight, Robin, Irving Berlin once asked for a White Christmas. Most of the country will be getting that and more -- a cold snap that may give the blues to some holiday travelers. And we'll be reporting on a different kind of blues, the kind some laid-off workers face when they are called back to work.

WOMAN: You can't have the rights, you can't have quality one under those conditions. And you can quote me on that. You can't have quality one if you got hit in the stomach.

WOODRUFF: Norman Mailer, Philip Roth and newcomer Stephen Wright head one critic's list of literary achievement in '83. We'll find out why.

MacNEIL: Officially winter is only two days old, but today it brought some parts of the country some of the most brutal weather in years. At least 123 people have died as a result of a weeklong siege of severe storms and record low temperatures across the country. Today's arctic weather came at the worst possible time for hundreds of thousands of Christmas travelers. Airports and train stations in various parts of the country are reporting delays of up to six hours because of icy conditions and subzero temperatures. At Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, the world's busiest, the mercury dipped to 18 below zero, crippling some service vehicles and delaying flights for several hours. In Denver, heavy snows continued to fall today, and the temperature wasn't expected to rise above seven below zero. At last count at least 35 cities were reporting record lows. Travelers advisories for snowy weather are in effect in states from Nevada to Vermont. Meanwhile, power plants were struggling to meet the increased demands of a freezing population. And the Weather Service says there's no relief in sight.

Here's what the forecasters are predicting for this Christmas weekend. The Pacific Coast should expect rain in the southern area and cold and possible snow up north. The Rockies will be shivering in cold, rain and snow, although there may be some clearing Christmas Day. States in the south-central region are in for more of the same -- cold with possible rain and snow. The north-central states will remain in the grip of freezing temperatures. And while the Midwest won't get a break from the bitter cold, it may get some sunshine below the Great Lakes. The Southeast will be partly sunny but cold, and the Northeast can expect a blustery, cold and snowy Christmas. Judy? Pentagon Marine Inguiry

WOODRUFF: There was a news report today that an inquiry conducted by the Pentagon has found that serious failures in the Marine chain of command contributed to the Beirut truck bombing on October that left 241 Marines dead. The New York Times said the inquiry concludes that military officers gave little consideration to the issue of how terrorism might threaten a conventional military force. It also said the inquiry raised sharp criticism of the officers in the European command who supervise the Marines, including generals and admirals. The Joint Chiefs of Staff met yesterday to review the report and consider whether to take disciplinary action against senior officers considered responsible for security at the Marine compound. The Pentagon report, which has still not been made public, follows a report last Monday by a congressional subcommittee that said very serious errors in judgment by the officers in Beirut and in the chain of command had left the Marines vulnerable. For more on the military questions that are being raised by both of these reports, we talk with Harlan Ulman, former director of extended planning for the chief of naval operations. The Marine line of command goes through the Navy. Commander Ulman, who has taught at the National War College, is now a senior fellow at the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies. Mr. Ulman, are these criticisms of the military up and down the chain of command, are they justified?

HARLAN ULMAN: I think that there's a larger issue here, and I think that larger issue has to do with the overall command structure which exists in the military and Department of Defense. It's interesting to note that as of last spring the then-serving chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General David Jones, noted that the Joint Chiefs needed a major reorganization. And I think that part of the problem is that there are some organizational changes that are indeed important. The Long Commission report, which has not yet been released, and the subcommittee report of the House I think really strike at those implications.

WOODRUFF: Well, now, let's be more specific, to get back to what happened in Beirut. Are you saying that the commanders on the ground there -- let's start with them -- the people on the ground were not responsible?

Mr. ULMAN: No, I'm saying that it's very difficult to anticipate a terrorist attack to the degree that it occurred in Beirut, and that a terrorist attack is going to claim some degree of human life. I think that the people on the ground certainly bore some responsibility for what transpired, but I think that the larger part of the problem has to deal with the overall command structure and our ability to assimilate new and changing roles for which our forces are not necessarily configured nor trained.

WOODRUFF: Well, can you be a little bit more specific about what your point is? At what point in the chain of command does it break down?

Mr. ULMAN: Well, the chain of command in this particular case goes through the President, through the secretary of defense, through the unified commander, which is -- in this case would be the commander-in-chief in Europe; then through the chain of command in the Mediterranean to the Marines on the ground. There are a lot of levels, it seems to me, in that particular chain, and a much more streamlined apparatus or structure would be much more useful.

WOODRUFF: How?

Mr. ULMAN: For example, if the Marine commander on the ground reported almost directly back to a command unit in the Pentagon I think we would streamline a lot of the difficulties out of the system.

WOODRUFF: Well, how could this have been avoided if that had been the case?

Mr. ULMAN: Well, I think if that were the case there would have been fewer levels of intermediary commanders involved, and I think there would have been a better chance for oversight.

WOODRUFF: As you know, there's a terrorist group called the Islamic Holy War, a Moslem extremist group, rather, that has said, number one, it claimed credit for the bombing at the Marine headquarters. And now it has said, and just yesterday issued a warning, that unless the American and the French troops get out within the next 10 days, that the earth will shake beneath their feet. Can they make good on that kind of a threat?

Mr. ULMAN: Well, I think that they can make good of the threat of detonating car bombs and other explosives virtually where they want. We on the other hand can make good minimizing the damage through our intelligence networks, through spreading our forces and deploying our forces so that we can minimize the amount of damage that's going to be done.But the point of fact is that if you have a terrorist who's willing to give up his life, he can cause a great deal of damage. And preventing that from happening is very difficult. The other point to realize is that if a terrorist attack -- a terrorist attack does not have to occur all of a sudden. I mean if the timing is not right, the terrorist can retract and attack again at a time much more suitable for their choosing. So surprise is almost always on their side.

WOODRUFF: Well, how do we go about preventing terrorist attacks? Is there anything we can do politically, if we can't do anything militarily?

Mr. ULMAN: There are two larger issues that are raised here. The first issue has to do with our intelligence collection capability, which as you know was severely minimized in the past years. In other words, the CIA and so forth lost a great deal of its human detection capability. I think that's got to be improved. Given that and given the sensitivity of these kinds of attacks and the way that we change our training techniques, I think that things can be done to minimize the attacks and in some cases to prevent them.But bear in mind, given the fact that terrorists have the advantage of surprise and can attack whenever they wish to, that's a huge advantage which is going to make life very difficult for the defender.

WOODRUFF: As you know, there are some very large American ships that are stationed in the waters just off of Beirut. Are those ships vulnerable to terrorist attacks?

Mr. ULMAN: The ships off Beirut are not vulnerable, in the main, because they have plenty of sea room. In other words, just by avoiding would-be small boats, so forth, they can probably take sufficient deterrent action to avoid being put into position where, for example, a suicide boat could come alongside them

WOODRUFF: But what about some kind of a missile?

Mr. ULMAN: It becomes very difficult.Very difficult. And if the ships are brought into harm's way and the other side can produce -- whomever the other side may be -- a cruise missile or a guided missile of some sort, there's no question that they could do some damage to those ships under certain circumstances.

WOODRUFF: Are you saying there's really no way we could protect against that sort of an incident?

Mr. ULMAN: What I'm saying is that you have to be very, very careful in how you deploy those ships. If you are going to deploy those ships to a small area where they don't have a lot of sea room, then you have to be very, ready for that type of attack. The thing to do is to be able to deploy your ships where they can maneuver freely and not put themselves in a position where they can be attacked in the first place.

WOODRUFF: If you were still involved in planning at the Pentagon today, is there any one bit of advice that you'd be giving to the military commanders there?

Mr. ULMAN: Yeah, there's a lot of advice I think I'd be giving to the military commanders there. The whole notion of unconventional warfare is something that's reasonably new. By unconventional warfare I mean conventional weapons that are used in an unconventional manner, unconventional weapons themselves, or unconventional strategies where the other side tries to manipulate us and so forth. Generally our forces have been configured to fight conventional wars largely against a Russian threat. I think a mindset has got to be introduced through the entire chain of command that appreciates that warfare is changing, that these unconventional threats are entirely serious, they require a new set of values and a new set of operating instructions to deal with them. And I think that's the most important thing, to establish the means for taking on these new threats, which really are very, very different and fundamentally challenge our forces, which are conventional forces which have been designed to fight in conventional situations. The Middle East and other areas are no longer conventional situations.

WOODRUFF: All right. Thank you very much, Mr. Ulman. Robin?

MacNEIL: Turning to Central America, the government of Honduras said today that an American bishop reported to have been killed in Nicaragua is alive and has crossed safely into Honduras. Bishop Salvador Schlaefer, who is 65, was reported by Nicaragua's Sandinista government to have been killed by anti-Sandinista rebels, or contras, operating from Honduras. The bishop, who has lived in Nicaragua for 38 years, was reported to be escorting a large group of Miskito Indian refugees on a march out of Nicaragua. Judy?

WOODRUFF: The approach of Christmas hasn't meant any letup in the bad news coming out of the Middle East. Three Red Cross workers were injured today when their car ran over some land mines just southeast of Beirut. There was also some shooting between Druse militiamen and rightist Christian fighters in the area, but there were no reports of casualties. The defense ministers of France and Britain visited their troops in Beirut, with French Minister Charles Hernu saying he planned to step up security against terrorist attacks. In Rome, Italy's president, Sandro Pertini, accused U.S. forces of remaining in Lebanon only to defend Israel, and he called for Italy's 2,000-man contingent from the multinational force to withdraw. The Italian government recently announced plans to cut the size of its force in half.

Meanwhile, Israeli officials continued to attack yesterday's meeting between PLO Chairman Arafat and Egyptian President Murabak. Israeli Prime Minister Shamir told a visiting U.S. senator today that Washington was wrong to encourage the meeting. Shamir reportedly told Connecticut Democrat Christopher Dodd that the PLO had been on the verge of collapse as a political factor until the meeting with Mubarak.Israeli radio reported today that in a stormy meeting in Washington late yesterday between Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Meir Rosenne and Undersecretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, the Americans reaffirmed their rejection of the Israeli protest. Israeli officials are said to believe that Washington encouraged Mubarak to meet with Arafat in order to revive President Reagan's 15-month-old Mideast peace plan.Robin?

MacNEIL: A modern Christmas tradition was observed today on U.S. warships off the coast of Lebanon. Comedian Bob Hope, who started entertaining front-line troops over Christmas 1943, was back again with a troop of American entertainers featuring Cathy Lee Crosby and Brooke Shields. Brian Stewart of the CBC reports.

BRIAN STEWART, CBC [voice-over]: War has changed much over 40 years, but as the Bob Hope show helicoptered around the U.S. fleet today, some things seem the same. Above all, there were the young troops starved of fun, happy for a break.

MASTER OF CEREMONIES: Guys, if you can bring him on, how about a good warm welcome to Bob Hope?

STEWART [voice-over]: To some, the comedian's arrival might seem ominous, a sign of long-term U.S. commitment here. The comedian himself denied it, says he doesn't want Marines here next year. In the meantime there were troops to entertain and it was Beirut black humor that got the most laughs.

BOB HOPE: I can't believe this place. I saw some people in Beirut calmly eating lunch at an outdoor cafe. Thirty seconds earlier it had been an indoor cafe.

STEWART [voice-over]: Neither Hope nor the others set foot in Beirut for security reasons. But that bothered no one.

Mr. HOPE: I asked someone for directions and they said, you go down here past the hand-to-hand combat, turn left at the missile attack, then hang a right at the fire, you can't miss it, it's right across the street from the riot.

STEWART: Hope's visit offshore cheered the Marines, but the fact that he could not safely visit Beirut itself shows just how serious the situation is now for the multinationals. It underscored the fact that no one is really safe in Beirut no matter how many soldiers are around or how massive are the defenses.

MacNEIL: Bob Hope, who's now 80 years old, said, "I haven't done a show like this in 12 years. I needed the fix,"

Meanwhile, in the Persian Gulf there was naval action between Iraq and Iran, which have been at war for more than three years. Iraq said today that its navy sank an Iranian rescue ship on its way to help two sister vessels damaged in an Iraqi air attack yesterday. One of the two disabled ships was also reported sunk. Iran had no comment. Judy? Jeane Kirkpatrick

WOODRUFF: Because of the continuing political and military turmoil in the Middle East and uncertainty over U.S. policy and various other issues confronting the Reagan administration as it heads into its fourth year, we've invited the United States ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick, to be with us this evening. As U.N. ambassador, Ms. Kirkpatrick deals with virtually every foreign policy issue facing this administration. Ms. Kirkpatrick, let me ask you first about comments that both the U.N. Secretary General Perez de Cuellar and his top aide, Brian Urghart, have said regarding the fact that a U.N. peacekeeping force, in their view, would do a better job in Lebanon than the current multinational force. Do you agree with them?

Amb. JEANE KIRKPATRICK: Well, I don't know, it's a highly theoretical question, of course, because the fact is that a U.N. peacekeeping force has not been available. As I'm sure you know, for a U.N. peacekeeping force to be stationed anyplace, there has to be approval by the Security Council. In that Security Council the Soviet Union has a veto, and so far the Soviets, who never support peacekeeping forces, by the way -- they never vote for them and they never pay their share; sometimes they abstain and let other people develop one -- so far the Soviet Union has indicated opposition to the deployment either of a substantial number of U.N. observers in the region or a broader deployment of a U.N. peacekeeping force. So it's a purely theoretical question which we've never had a chance to explore.

WOODRUFF: So you're really saying it's just not a realistic alternative.

Amb. KIRKPATRICK: Well, so far it hasn't been. So far it hasn't been.

WOODRUFF: Is the mission of the Marines in Lebanon still a viable one?

Amb. KIRKPATRICK: Oh, I think so. I think so. And I think, by the way, that was just reaffirmed yesterday, not only by the President and secretary of state here, but also by the highest-level officials of the French government, including, for example, Defense Minister Hernu.

WOODRUFF: Well, as you have heard in the news today, the Italian president, Mr. Pertini, is saying that the Americans are really only in Lebanon to defend the Israelis and that the Italians should pull their men out entirely.

Amb. KIRKPATRICK: I haven't actually read the text of President Pertini's statement, and so I wouldn't want to comment on it. I would note, however, that while I have the highest regard for the president of Italy, we shouldn't imagine, we shouldn't confuse his function. He's not the top policymaking figure in the Italian government -- that's the prime minister. And the prime minister so far has of course continued to support, and a majority of the Italian Parliament, that is, the government of Italy has supported the deployment of their forces there.

WOODRUFF: So you're saying -- what you are saying then is that for the foreseeable future this mulinational force is going to be there?

Amb. KIRKPATRICK: Oh, certainly. I think we've made that very clear and the French have made that clear, and the Italians, in fact, have made it clear. As you know, the multinational force consists of Americans and French and Italians and British, and they are all there.

WOODRUFF: Let me ask you about this meeting yesterday between PLO Chairman Arafat and the Egyptian president, Mr. Mubarak. Did the United States encourage that meeting to take place?

Amb. KIRKPATRICK: I don't have any personal knowledge of that, frankly.

WOODRUFF: Why -- the Americans, as you know, have said that they are encouraged that it did take place. Why would that be?

Amb. KIRKPATRICK: Well, I read, in fact, that some government press spokesmen have said that. I think that -- I feel sure that what they were saying, which they did say, is that we welcome all openings for broader peace in the Middle East. We have and we will. And, you know, every time two factions or countries who have been deeply hostile to one another find it possible to meet amicably, I think we tend to regard that as progress.

WOODRUFF: And what about the Israeli view that this has been a blow to the peace process?

Amb. KIRKPATRICK: Well, I think that the Israelis quite understandably have very deep resentments against Chairman Arafat and the PLO fighters, who have been making a kind of guerrilla war on Israel for quite a long time. And I think that that makes them very uncomfortable. I think that's all we could say. You know, I said the other day about the relationships between the United States and Britain that sometimes in international affairs, we speak as though we expected that among friends everything was going to be perfect harmony all the time, and that that was just about as realistic as expecting an absolutely frictionless marriage or an absolutely orderly house or any of those other kind of chimerical ideals. United States and Israel have many, many, many views fundamentally in common with regard to the Middle East. That's not changed.

WOODRUFF: All right, thank you.Robin?

MacNEIL: Ambassador Kirkpatrick, turning to Central America, yesterday you asked the secretary general of the United Nations, it's reported, to intervene to assure the safety of the American bishop, Schlaefer. What's the latest information that you have officially? Is he still alive?

Amb. KIRKPATRICK: Yes. My understanding is that he is alive and is in Honduras, and as a matter of fact probably will have arrived in Tegucigalpa by now, by the time we're speaking now.

MacNEIL: What is --

Amb. KIRKPATRICK: Along with two other American citizens. He is of course an American citizen.

MacNEIL: What is the story behind all this, to your understanding?

Amb. KIRKPATRICK: Well, I'd like to say that I'm not certain that I have been accurately informed, but my best understanding of the situation is that something between 2,500 and 3,000 Miskito Indians, who were in one of the internment camps where they've been put by the government of Nicaragua, were scheduled to be moved to a location deep in the interior, away from the area in which they have always lived and worked. And they, as it were, escaped. Now, Bishop Schlaefer, as I understand it, had been living among those Indians for some 30 years as a kind of spiritual counselor and guide to them. And they sought when they -- they left, simply; they escaped, as it were, and wanted to make their way toward the Honduran border. And Bishop Schlaefer and another priest, whose name was Shafer, I think, accompanied them and they began a long trek toward the Honduran border. Now, my understanding also is that they were repeatedly fired on by Sandinista planes, helicopters, rockets, strafe, that sort of thing; that they were -- an unknown number were killed and wounded; that they were forced to split up into small groups and try to hide; and that some of them, maybe 500 of them perhaps, managed -- that some unknown number of them managed this morning, this afternoon sometime to cross the border into Honduras along with Bishop Schlaefer and Father Shafer and another American citizen, whom I heard was a journalist, by the way.

MacNEIL: Well, if there was, I suppose all this will come out eventually, but it's just that there are other conflicting versions of this. Bishop Schlaefer's superior in Managua, his superior in the Cappacino Order, said that the 500 Indians were 500 who were chosen not to go across but were kind of kidnapped or coerced into going by some Contras, or anti-Sandinista rebels, and that Bishop Schlaefer was compelled to go along with them.

Amb. KIRKPATRICK: I heard that. I understand that that is the version of events which was put out this afternoon by the government of Nicaragua. And I understand that according to their version, all of the Miskitos, which are clearly something over 2,000 -- closer to 3,000, I understand -- were, as it were, kidnapped by Contras. Now, the other, the version which I had heard from other sources and especially from the Miskito representatives in the area was that the Miskitos were escaping, desired to go to Honduras as refugees, and were repeatedly attacked, and that as they neared the border, some of the Miskitos who have been fighting the government moved down to try to help protect them against attacks by the government. I think we'll know the full story very soon, though. I would not suggest that I have access to all the facts on this. Like you I've been getting bits and pieces of information about it. It sounds, though, like a long, hard, difficult, dangerous trek that these people have made.

MacNEIL: Well, thank you. Judy?

WOODRUFF: If I may change the subject again, there was a report today that the State Department has recommended that the United States pull out of UNESCO, which is the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Is that true?

Amb. KIRKPATRICK: I'm not certain. What I can tell you about that is that the whole subject of the United States' relationship with UNESCO has been under review. There has been a group involved in a very systematic review of it. A recommendation was made within the State Department.

WOODRUFF: Would you like to see us pull out of UNESCO?

Amb. KIRKPATRICK: I have -- I never talk about the recommendations I make to the President. I think there's a strong case to be made for giving notification to UNESCO. The question really isn't now whether we pull out. The question is whether we give notification to UNESCO by December 31st of an intention to withdraw as of January 1, 1985 -- that is, of an intention to withdraw in a year.

WOODRUFF: Why would we want to withdraw from that organization?

Amb. KIRKPATRICK: Because actually UNESCO is a kind of caricature of all the ills that have befallen any part of the United Nations system. It has become very highly politicized, very highly politicized; highly discriminatory against Israel, for example -- it's where the delegitimization campaign against Israel first got under way. It has been -- it's launched a new information order, so-called, which instead of trying to promote a free press has tried to create obstacles to the free flow of information among nations in the world.

WOODRUFF: What about the argument --

Amb. KIRKPATRICK: And it's an enormously bloated and wasteful bureaucracy.

WOODRUFF: What about the argument, though, that if we pulled out we lose influence?

Amb. KIRKPATRICK: That's -- that would be true if we had influence. The fact is we don't have any influence in UNESCO, and that's what has become clearer and clearer. Some people believe that we should have pulled out of UNESCO a long time. I've always taken the view that we should stay in and fight and cooperate with our friends and try to establish influence. We have not been successful.

WOODRUFF: It was just earlier this week that the United States announced it was going to be cutting aid dramatically to Zimbabwe. Is that because Zimbabwe has not voted with the U.S. in the Security Council?

Amb. KIRKPATRICK: Oh no, of course not, of course not, of course not, of course not. None of our decisions on economic assistance are made on any kind of single ground. You know, I think every decision on economic assistance is made on the basis of a number of factors.And that includes our strategic concerns in the country, the human rights record in the country, and, probably, their general position in the world, whether they are generally pursuing the same foreign policy goals, same values that we do, or not.

WOODRUFF: Even though Zimbabwe sponsored a resolution deploring, condemning our invasion of Grenada?

Amb. KIRKPATRICK: No, no, no, no, no. No. No, no, no, no. That certainly -- the U.S. government would never, in my very best judgment, undertake to cut aid to any country on the basis of any single factor such as that.

WOODRUFF: All right. Thank you very much, Ambassador Kirkpatrick, for being with us. Robin?

MacNEIL: In other foreign news, American officials in Laos have received the remains of some American servicemen who have been missing in action since 1972. The government news agency there said a team of American investigators had visited the site where an Air Force C-130 plane crashed with a crew of 13. The news agency gave no further details, and the Americans wouldn't talk until they'd reported to Washington.

In Sweden, three Soviet citizens, two of them diplomats, have been expelled for spying on the electronic and weapons industries. The Swedish Foreign Office said all three have been asked to leave the country as soon as possible.

And in Germany, two East German border guards escaped from East Berlin to West Berlin by swimming across a canal, leaving their weapons behind. They were turned over to American officers in the United States sector for questioning.We'll be back in a moment.

[Video postcard -- North Pole].

MacNEIL: Lynn Helms, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration, resigned today, giving personal reasons. Helms has recently been under investigation by the Transporation Department's Office of Ethics in connection with alleged business activities before he joined the Reagan administration. Helms is a former test pilot and chairman [audio difficulties] system after nearly 12,000 air traffic controllers were fired when they went on strike in 1981.

In another transportation story, the Interstate Commerce Commission has lifted its order blocking the proposed merger of the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific railroads. The action cleared the way for the holding companies which own the railroads to merge, but to put their railroad holdings into a trust until the proposed rail merger is actually approved, probably sometime next year. The new company, to be called Santa Fe-Southern Pacific, would be the country's third largest railroad. Judy? Blue-Collar Relocation Hiring

WOODRUFF: The U.S. auto industry received a nice Christmas present today.Domestic car sales rose 25.2% during mid-December, giving the auto industry its best showing for that period in five years. It was particularly good news for Ford and Chrysler, which reported sales gains of 22% and 18%. The recent surge in auto sales also means that thousands of laid-off auto workers will be going back to work, but not necessarily at their old jobs. Kwame Holman has this report.

KWAME HOLMAN [voice-over]: For 40-year-old Berry Russell, November 28th should have been one of the happiest days of his life. He was going back to work after four years of unemployment. His employer is the Ford Motor Company assembly plant in St. Paul, Minnesota. But for Berry and thousands of others, going back to work involves major sacrifices and hardships.

Berry's story begins 680 miles away in Detroit. He was laid off from a Ford plant here in Michigan four years ago. Unemployment took its usual toll on the Russell family, and after two years his wife left him and their three children.

BERRY RUSSELL: And every time you'd look up and turn the news on, everything on the news seems so bad, you know? Here's thousands and hundreds of peoples, car peoples out of work. And so I was praying on the one hand and wishing on the other one that Ford hurry up and call me. Now he called me.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Ford is calling workers back through a nationwide seniority system, so Berry must travel to Minnesota if he wants this job. If he doesn't accept it, it could be years before he would work again in Detroit.

[interviewing] President Reagan said that people without jobs ought to vote with their feet, that is, go where the jobs are.

Mr. RUSSELL: How? You know? Like I asked him, when I seen that on television, you know, I asked him through the television how is they going to go on their feet, you know, get on their feet and go? They're just like me now. The job is in Minneapolis. I got on my feet, but I ain't got no way to get there, you know? A man can't walk that far in this cold nowadays, you know what I mean?

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Berry could barely raise the money for a bus trip to Minnesota. Ford did not advance him any funds for travel or temporary lodging, so he could not afford to bring his family with him. He was especially concerned about 10-year-old Duane.

Mr. RUSSELL: I won't be here every day when he wake up or when he come from school, you know. Like "Wow, where's daddy?" you know. No daddy here. He had a hard time when his mama left, you know, but he got over it. So, but this now, he think that I'm doing the same thing that his mama doing, in his mind. I got roots here, you know, and now they want me to just close up like a pioneer and head to the north, you know, and start everything over again. Ain't got no money, ain't got no place to stay when I up there; I don't even know where the place is at. And they're going to tell me I got to be there.

HOLMAN: To the people here in Detroit, where unemployment is still estimated to be over 16%, it may seem that Berry Russell is on his way to a good thing. To many here, a job no matter where it is located is to be envied. But with this move, Berry Russell faces problems that may outweigh even his own enthusiasm for his new job.

[voice-over] After 22 hours on the bus, Berry arrived at the Ford plant in St. Paul. He reported to Jerry Norsby, the plant's head of labor relations.

Mr. RUSSELL: Yeah. The name is Russell, Berry --

JERRY NORSBY, supervisor, labor relations: Oh, you're Berry Russell, uhhuh, okay. You -- I heard you got detoured, huh?

Mr. RUSSELL: Yeah, snowed in and everything else, you know?

Mr. NORSBY: Where did you end up?

Mr. NORSBY: In almost all cases it's the first time they've ever had to relocate, so they're operating in a kind of a vacuum in terms of what's ahead of them when they come here. Most of our white-collar workers -- yes, there's always a first, but they're more exposed through their co-workers in terms of what to expect. The blue-collar worker, the people that are coming in here, they don't have that opportunity. They don't seek it out; they're just, as I say, operating kind of in a vacuum.

MAN: Have you got a place to stay now, or have you looked, or you just got into town, right?

Mr. RUSSELL: Just got in.

MAN: Okay. Here's a list of motels. Now, if you want to go that route. Now, I don't know what you want to do.

Mr. RUSSELL: I've got to go cheap as I can.

MAN: Yeah, okay. The cheapest. . .

Mr. RUSSELL: You go over there and they said, "Well, we want $200 a month, plus six or seven hundred dollars security deposit." And then when the man tells me, or the woman tells me, said, "I don't have it." They said, "Well, we can't rent you the place out." I said, "Well, Miss, I've been out of work for five years. I just got a job." "Well, this is not my fault," you know. So you got to turn back around and look at the cold and go out there and wonder where can you go.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: So for two nights, Berry ended up on the floor of this apartment. He shared its one bedroom with three other men. The next night he moved into a motel with other recalled workers. Berry again had to sleep on the floor.

AUTO WORKER: We're paying $500 a month for this. One room and a bathroom.

2nd AUTO WORKER: A bed, TV set, that's about it.

3rd AUTO WORKER: This is tour station number one.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Housing is not their only problem. Most of these workers have to learn an entirely new kind of job. To ease them into their new surroundings Ford arranged a day-and-a-half orientation program and a tour of the plant.Like Berry, many of them had never worked on an assembly line before. Berry had spent his entire career at a Ford engine plant.

Mr. RUSSELL: If they'd never would have told me that they could put a truck or a tire together and drive it off the line from scratch, I never would have believed it. Gas in and everything.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: These workers are being asked to help make real the slogan that at Ford, quality is job one. But their immediate number one concern is how they can survive until their first paychecks. A fraction of them, those who were laid off due to plant closings, should get relocation money in about two months. But they all need money now for food and housing. They cannot get loans, they cannot even qualify for travelers aid, so they look to the company to advance them the money.

4th AUTO WORKER: They loan you the money to move, and then you take home the paycheck? That's what I heard.

Mr. NORSBY: No. There is no up-front money provided from the company. We have a job for you, and it might sound a little crass, but it's your responsibility to come here, get settled in and find your own accommodations. But what we have for you here is a job, and that's all we have. We have a job.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Workers had no better luck at the union hall, where the credit union manager told them they did not qualify for loans.

JERRY ZIEGLER, credit union manager: Because the credit union is owned by the members, we have to use sound credit judgment in lending their money. What the board has said is that they would like to have each individual past their probationary period. It gives us some indication that we've got a reasonable likelihood of getting repayment.

Mr. RUSSELL [after meeting]: You know, it's like over at the local, when the dude asks about the loan and all like that, you know? And the dude looks up and tells me, "Well, we don't know if you going to stay here or not." See what I mean? But I started to say something, but, you know. . .

5th AUTO WORKER: Yeah, we wouldn't come all the way two states over. We plan on staying here and working. Now, they act like we going to be leaving in a week.

6th AUTO WORKER: We living worse that what we left welfare for. And then they tell us be grateful you got a job. How can we be grateful for a job if up here we're messed up because we can't eat and we can't sleep, and not know what's going to happen tomorrow?

BILL McGEE: And who all has no funds to eat on? Four. All right. We will give you some funds tonight.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Their complaints finally attracted some attention. Union member Bill McGee tapped an emergency fund to loan them each $10 for food.

These rehired workers are some of the best employees that Ford laid off. Before they were called back their records were carefully screened, and nine of 10 of them succeed at the St. Paul plant.

[interviewing] So in a manner of speaking, these people are the cream of the crop?

Mr. NORSBY: Yes, I'd say so. We have some fairly stringent standards that we use in our screening procedures. Yes, I'd say that's a fair statement.

HOLMAN: I know it's not your decision, but do you think these people should have some kind of money to get them by initially?

Mr. NORSBY: Well, you're asking me a question of, I guess, company morality. It's a big company, we have obviously thousands of employees, so you're talking a potential of an extremely costly thing there if you're talking about providing up-front money for all those people.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: When the orientation program was over, Berry started work on the afternoon shift. He finally was getting a chance to earn a living. But at the end of that shift he had only $12 in his pocket, and all he had eaten from four p.m. to one a.m. was bubble gum and water.

Mr. RUSSELL: It seemed it was all right, but like at the end of the night it started coming on me, you know. But, hey, I struggled on through, you know, me and my cold water and my bubble gum. You know, we struggled on through until the man said this is the end of the shift. I'm so hungry right now, you know, that water don't even fill me up. You know? But I got to wait another week before I get paid.

HOLMAN: The problems we saw in St. Paul are not limited to Berry Russell and his new co-workers. Those same problems will be faced by thousands of blue-collar workers as they are forced to choose between their homes and their jobs. To find out more about the relocation and treatment of blue-collar workers, to find out why they are suffering so much, we came back to Detroit to the world headquarters of Ford Motor Company. The man we talked to, Ernest Savoie, was a key figure in the development of the policies on relocation hiring.

[interviewing] Many of these people are coming from long-term unemployment. The company seems to be saying, "We have a job. Get here any way you can to get it." Why couldn't a program have been designed to meet some of the needs of those people?

ERNEST SAVOIE, director, labor relations planning, Ford Motor Company: I would say that that would have been a very unfortunate local situation if that occurred. I would not condone it, because for people to handle that situation, they have to know about it, in the first place. And I think that's a situation that ought to be looked into.

HOLMAN: Who would you say is ultimately responsible for what we saw in St. Paul among those workers?

Mr. SAVOIE: Well, if we have to talk about responsibility -- let me put it another way. First of all, something good did happen to these people, that they had a job whereas before they had no job. Some people, even though they benefit from the process, as Berry Russell did benefit -- he is at work, he is accumulating some money, he does have a good job, otherwise he wouldn't have taken the job, that's why he came; he's building up back his seniority rights, but he probably did suffer some trauma, some of which was, I think, inevitable, and some of which could have been lessened.

HOLMAN: Don't white-collar workers get up-front money for their move while these blue-collar workers who have been laid off for a long time got nothing?

Mr. SAVOIE: No. The white-collar -- and I've moved, and some of my people have moved, and everything else -- you get reimbursed after the fact. You hand in your bills after the fact.

HOLMAN: But that's assuming that you had the resources to do it before the fact. These people had no resources.

Mr. SAVOIE: Right. If I didn't save my money -- I didn't have any resources either -- I have to go to the bank and borrow or find some other way to do it. I mean that's my individual responsibility as to what my resources are.

HOLMAN: Isn't it difficult to expect that person to come up with those resources in order to make a move?

Mr. SAVOIE: Okay. We're living in a very complicated world, number one, as far as the facts go. We seem to be assuming that there seems to be some overall welfare responsibility for anybody who ever worked for a particular company or joined a particular union for ever and ever. That's not the situation.

WOODRUFF: The question of management and union responsibility for reemployed workers is an unresolved one. Both Ford and the Auto Workers Union acknowledge that the issue will be part of next year's collective bargaining.

The St. Louis Globe-Democrat, a 131-year-old newspaper that was going to go out of business next month, was saved today. Jeffrey Gluck, the publisher of the magazine Saturday Review, said that he had signed a contract to buy the paper and would continue publication. Gluck takes over February 25th, and the present owners will keep the paper going until then. Robin?

MacNEIL: As the year draws to a close we've been doing what many publications do, asking critics to select their favorite books from the past year.Tonight our literary critic is John Aldridge, who's also a professor of English at the University of Michigan and an author, whose latest book is The American Novel and the Way We Live Now. He chose three books from 1983: Meditations in Green, a first novel by Stephen Wright published by Scribner's; The Anatomy Lesson, the third in a series of novels by Philip Roth and published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux; and finally Norman Mailer's latest novel, Ancient Evenings, published by Little, Brown.

MacNEIL: Let's begin with Ancient Evenings, this by Norman Mailer. This is a book that's been very, very widely reviewed and discussed, but for the benefit of people who may not be familiar with it, just describe the theme and the setting briefly.

JOHN ALDRIDGE: One of the things I find remarkable about Mailer is that he's always beginning over, in effect. You can't tell where he's going in each new book. And this is, I think, the most radical departure he's made. He takes us back almost 4,000 years of human history to ancient Egypt, and he re-creates, as much as this is ever possible, on the basis of very little historical information, the whole world of ancient Egypt. The religious practices, the pharaoh gods, the very cultish movements, in addition to which he talks about the psychology, he penetrates the psychology of the individual characters, of whom there are a number.

MacNEIL: Why do you think he went so far back in time for material, so far removed from this day?

Mr. ALDRIDGE: That's a wonderfully intriguing question. I don't think there's any way of knowing whether it was because he got so interested in the period because his original idea was to trace his own family from its origins in that period. But then he got interested in ancient Egypt generally. And I have a curious sort of theory about all this, which I'll try out on you, if you don't mind. Mailer has always felt the modern world suffered from a series of dislocations in which people were separated from themselves, from their psyches, from their morals, from their religion, from their physical environment. The bugaboo was technology, which tends to dehumanize. And I have a notion which I can't support at all, that he saw ancient Egypt as he was digging into it more and more as a sort of ideal community, a kind of prelapsarian paradise in which man had not yet fallen into the disarray of the 20th century. And that the remarkable thing about the book is how whole these people are, and how connected they feel with their gods, with one another to the point where they communicate telepathically, with magic, with all the areas of feeling and perception which we've had pretty well taken out of us by experience in the 20th century.

MacNEIL: You're talking so warmly and enthusiastically about the book. Why has it split reviewers so much? Why are there some people who absolutely hate it and some people who think it's wonderful?

Mr. ALDRIDGE: You had a first wave of reviews which were pretty awful. And I think it's because there was an enormous amount of accumulated resentment against Mailer, and also an enormous amount of anticipation which was accumulated over the 10 years or so he was writing this book, promising thisbook, letting people wonder what it was going to be like. Then he brings out this strange breed of book which isn't at all like anything Mailer has done before, and I think that the first wave of reviewers were taken aback, disappointed, irritated; most of them, I think, probably didn't get through it fully and perhaps didn't understand it. And so they reacted in many cases simply stupidly.

MacNEIL: He is a major American writer, world writer, if not a great writer. Is this a major novel?

Mr. ALDRIDGE: Well, if you think -- if you call a novel major which tries to say something profound and interesting about our time immediately, I'd have to say no. But if you can appreciate the artistry and the daring which has gone into this, I think you have to say it's some kind of literary edifice, rather in the way that you might argue that the Taj Mahal -- it might possibly be defective as a piece of architecture, it may be uncomfortable, it may be inefficient, but it's certainly a wonderful work of art.

MacNEIL: Let's move on to your second selection, Philip Roth's The Anatomy Lesson. Describe that briefly for us.

Mr. ALDRIDGE: It's a departure from the previous two novels about Zuckerman, who's a successful writer.

MacNEIL: Like Roth is.

Mr. ALDRIDGE: Like Roth, and who, by the way, has written a nearly pornographic book like Portnoy's Complaint which has outraged his family. And Zuckerman is shown this time to be afflicted with an unknown ailment, it can't be diagnosed, which forces him to lie most of the time on a playmat in his living room -- the only way he can find ease. And what interested me about this is that instead of the characters sort of shouting and denouncing and confessing guilt into a vacuum, as they tend to do in some of his other novels, in this one you've got his rage and his guilt nicely objectified in that physical ailment.And the comedy comes in great part out of the kind of ridiculous lengths he goes to get rid of this ailment.

MacNEIL: And it is a funny book.

Mr. ALDRIDGE: It's an incredibly funny book, yeah. Partly because I think we know that the ailment is not in any way fatal, and also because Zuckerman enjoys the constant attendance of four rather beautiful women who take care of his every need. And so you think that even though he's yelling in pain, he also is in a very nice situation.

MacNEIL: So he's all right.

Mr. ALDRIDGE: Yeah.

MacNEIL: And turning to your third choice, Meditations in Green is a first novel by a writer called Stephen Wright.

Mr. ALDRIDGE: That is, I think, a brilliant first novel. The man is incredibly talented and I think he's written one of the most ruthless books about the Vietnam War that I've read, in the sense that he confronts the sheer naked horror of the whole thing; he shows it in phantasmagoric detail; and he also shows -- and I think this is the important point of the book -- the effect that this war had on the men who fought in it, and how so many of them were driven into drugs in order to escape the horror of the whole thing.And he makes it clear that even in their worst drug-induced fantasies or hallucinations, the reality of the war was much worse. And finally these soldiers leave the war, they're discharged and they enter into an urban slum world, where they're under treatment for drugs and so on, which turns out to be just as terrible, just as empty as the world war. And so I think that he's making some larger comment about the nature of our society.

MacNEIL: Well, Mr. Aldridge, thank you.

Mr. ALDRIDGE: Thank you.

MacNEIL: The books we've been discussing are Ancient Evenings by Norman Mailer, The Anatomy Lesson by Philip Roth, and Meditations in Green by Stephen Wright. Judy?

WOODRUFF: Turning now to a final look at today's news, the Christmas weekend is going to be a cold and snowy one for much of the nation.

In Lebanon it was a bit more of the same. Three Red Cross workers injured when they drove over a land mine.

The Italian president says he wants his nation's soldiers in the multinational peacekeeping force to come home.

And in Washington, more debate over why terrorists were able to attack the U.S. Marine headquarters last October.

Two Soviet diplomats have been asked to leave Sweden for nondiplomatic activities, while in East Germany two border guards decided they'd rather be on the other side of the border. Robin?

MacNEIL: We close tonight with a rather different story than we usually have from EL Salvador. In past years government and guerrilla forces have observed a kind of Christmas truce. Not this year. The Salvadoran army has cancelled all leaves and its commanders vow to continue the fighting through the holiday season. Today leftist rebels claimed they had killed more than 30 government troops in the northeastern part of the country. On assignment for this program, reporter Charles Krause and producer Susan Mills recently traveled to the small town of San Esteban Caterina in San Vicente province to cover the present state of the conflict between guerrillas and government troops. Once there they found, as we've said, a different story.

CHARLES KRAUSE [voice-over]: We went to San Esteban Caterina expecting to find the sounds and traumas of war. Instead what we found was a simple reaffirmation of faith. The Church in EL Salvador provides a voice for those caught in the violence that has torn this country apart.

[Christmas celebrations]

KRAUSE [voice-over]: Neither Marxism nor democracy mean very much to most Salvadorans. They believe in God and pray that He will deliver them from the political forces that fight in their name. This holiday season the people of EL Salvador once again pray for peace.

MacNEIL: Good night, Judy.

WOODRUFF: Good night, Robin. That's our NewsHour for tonight. I'm Judy Woodruff, and we all wish you a very Merry Christmas. Good night.