The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington.

MR. MacNeil: And I'm Robert MacNeil in New York. After tonight's News Summary, we look at NASA's high stakes mission to save the Hubble Telescope. We have a report on the Russian election campaign, a Newsmaker interview with Commerce Sec. Ron Brown about doing business with South Africa, and we have a Richard Rodriguez essay about sex in the Church. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: Police in Colombia shot and killed drug lord Pablo Escobar today 16 months after his escape from prison. He was cornered in a shopping mall in Medillin. As head of the Medillin cocaine cartel, Escobar was one of the most wanted men in the world. He had risen from poverty to become the world's richest men, with a fortune estimated at $3 billion. Escobar was blamed for a series of car bombings and assassinations that killed hundreds of people in Colombia, including judges, journalists, police, and even a candidate for president of the republic. Put in a luxury jail in 1991 after surrendering to avoid extradition to the U.S., he escaped last July. The U.S. and Colombia had offered a $9 million reward for his capture. Escobar was 44 years old. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Canada will implement the North American Free Trade Agreement on January 1st. The announcement today by Prime Minister Chretien removes the last major obstacle to the treaty. Chretien said he dropped his earlier resistance to the pact after winning concessions on subsidies and product dumping. U.S. and European trade negotiators in Belgium said today they were close to a breakthrough in world trade talks. The two sides are working to resolve a dispute over agricultural subsidies among other things. They are working against a December 15th deadline for completion of the 116-nation agreement known as the Uruguay Round. In U.S. economic news today, the government reported personal income rose .6 percent, consumer spending .8 percent in October, while new home sales fell 6.5 percent.

MR. MacNeil: The shuttle "Endeavour" with a seven-person crew aboard was launched in the early hours of this morning from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It's on an 11-day mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope which has been transmitting blurry images since its launch in 1990. Endeavour is carrying 11 replacement parts to the telescope. Astronauts will attempt to install them during at least five day-long space walks. We'll have more about the mission right after this News Summary. NASA confirmed today that its Johnson Space Center in Houston has been the target of an FBI investigation for alleged fraud. The center's director, P.J. White, said he had been informed that charges of waste and abuse were also being looked into. White made the comments after reports of an FBI sting operation at the facility. It was said to involve payoffs to NASA employees from federal agents posing as corrupt businessmen.

MR. LEHRER: All 18 people aboard were killed when a commuter plane crashed last night near Hibbing, Minnesota. The twin engine, turbo prop was operated by Northwest Air Link. The Minneapolis to Hibbing plane smashed into a large mound of mining waste about a mile from the airport. A spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration said no distress call was received. The cause of the crash is being investigated.

MR. MacNeil: Jewish settlers blocked roads in the Israeli- occupied West Bank today to protest the killing of two Israelis. The protest snarled traffic but no serious injuries were reported. The settlers were angry over an Arab shooting yesterday that killed a settler and a school teacher. Violence in the occupied territories has escalated with the approach of a December 13th target date for Israel to begin withdrawing from Gaza and the West Bank Town of Jericho.

MR. LEHRER: Bosnia's Muslim president walked out of the peace talks today saying they had accomplished nothing. He said he spent three days meeting mainly with the Bosnian Serb leader over dividing Sarajevo and the transfer of land in Eastern Bosnia. He said he was willing to return to the negotiating table but he would not say when. South African political leaders agreed today to abolish the country's four black homelands. They will be reincorporated into South Africa. The agreement was the final action of a two-year consequence of black and white political leaders. The conference wrote a new constitution and scheduled elections next April which are expected to produce the country's first black majority government.

MR. MacNeil: The U.S. today flew Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid to peace talks with rival clan leaders in Ethiopia. At one time the U.S. led a manhunt for Aidid. His forces were blamed for a series of attacks that killed dozens of U.N. troops. In Washington, a State Department spokeswoman defended the decision to transport Aidid, saying it would help from other dialogue between Somalia's rival clans. That's our summary of the news. Now it's on to the Hubble repair mission, the Russian elections, Commerce Sec. Ron Brown, and essayist Richard Rodriguez. FOCUS - HOBBLED HUBBLE

MR. MacNeil: NASA's ambitious mission to fix the Hubble Space Telescope is our lead. The astronauts, who flew into space today aboard the shuttle "Endeavour" will attempt a complicated and extensive repair of the telescope. The stakes are high for science and for the reputation of NASA. We'll hear two views about this after a backgrounder from Tom Bearden.

SPOKESMAN: One and liftoff of the space shuttle Discovery with the Hubble space telescope, the window on the universe.

MR. BEARDEN: The Hubble Space Telescope was launched in April of 1990 with great expectations. The telescope had cost $1.5 billion and taken 12 years to build. It was hoped that its orbit, 380 miles above Earth's turbulent atmosphere, would give the space telescope the ability to see distant galaxies and with a clarity 10 times greater than the giant telescopes on Earth. The extraordinary potential of Hubble's telescope had astronomers everywhere excited.

NETA BAHCALL, Princeton University: [April 1990] One of the most exciting projects or general topics, sub-disciplines that will be studied with this space telescope because of this very high clarity resolution for the first time is the origin of the universe, the cosmology, how the universe started, and how it's evolving to what we see today.

MR. BEARDEN: But those high hopes were never realized. Soon after its launch, scientists found out that Hubble had a problem, in fact a major problem. Hubble's mirror, the very essence of a telescope, was flawed. Dr. Lennard Fisk, chief scientist for NASA, explained the problem on the NewsHour shortly after it was discovered.

LENNARD FISK, NASA Chief Scientist: [June 1990] The problem is something that we think is, it's called spherical aberration, and we think the mirrors have this. And what that means is that the light from all the parts of the mirrors do not focus at precisely the same point. And, in fact, it appears as if the light from the very outer edge of the mirror focuses at a slightly different point than the mirror from, than the light from the inner part of the mirror.

MR. BEARDEN: But a mirror that can't focus wasn't Hubble's only flaw. The solar panels which power the craft cause the telescope to shutter when it passes from day to night, making observation impossible. And if that wasn't enough, three of the craft's six gyroscopes have also failed and need replacing. The spacecraft's troubles are no surprise to Robert Smith, who wrote a book about Hubble's development.

ROBERT SMITH, Author: The space telescope is a creature of the amount of money that's been provided for it. For example, the space telescope is being built on a proto-flight concept, not prototype. Prototype was the standard way that NASA built spacecraft in the 1960s. You build a prototype, you test that, you find out what changes you should make to the actual design of the final spacecraft, then you build the final spacecraft and fly it. Space telescopes, because the prototype would have been too expensive, the space telescope is being built on a proto-flight concept. What you build is what you fly. You test the flight article.

MR. BEARDEN: Because of this approach, Hubble's intricate mirror system was never completely tested on the ground. It wasn't until the first pictures from space started coming back that NASA realized it had a myopic telescope on its hands. Fortunate, NASA did design Hubble so it could be serviced in space. It has 225 feet of handrails on its sides and 31 pins for attaching portable foot restraints. In fact, originally, it was planned that Hubble could be serviced several times a year, but that was before the Challenger disaster when the shuttle's service missions were greatly curtailed. This week is the first service mission to Hubble, and a great deal is riding on it. For the last 20 months, the four-person astronaut crew who will be repairing Hubble have been painstakingly practicing their intricate mission. The practice takes place in a water tank at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. The water tank comes as close as possible to mimicking the zero gravity environment of space. In all, the astronauts are expected to take from five to eight space walks of up to six hours each, the most demanding and rigorous schedule yet for a shuttle repair mission. Many challenges lie ahead, including getting the Hubble into the shuttle's cargo bay. This may not be easy as discovered last year when astronauts struggled mightily to get a satellite out of orbit and into the shuttle, finally having to use their hands to accomplish the mission. The largest challenge of this mission will be to replace Hubble's wild field camera. This device contains sophisticated optics to correct for the mirror's flaws. Not only must the old camera be removed, but the new one must be installed just right, or else Hubble's view of the universe could be made worse.

MR. MacNeil: We're joined now by two NASA watchers with different perspectives on what's at stake in the Hubble rescue mission. John Bahcall is a professor of astrophysics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He's been involved in the planning of the Hubble Telescope for over 20 years. Alex Roland is a professor of technology at Duke University in North Carolina. He worked as a historian for NASA between 1973 and 1981. Everything I've read about this describes it as an extremely complex mission. One account said, "the most complex flight since the Apollo moon landings." Can you give us some idea of why it's so complex?

PROF. BAHCALL: It's so complex first of all because there's so many different tasks and because each of the task by themselves are excruciatingly precise in their requirements. So they have to do a lot of things, and they have to do each one of them perfectly.

MR. MacNeil: And it is not easy working in those conditions?

PROF. BAHCALL: It is extremely difficult. It's like if you were, if you were to imagine going a mile under the ocean in a very heavy, maybe two heavy winter suits, and trying to repair your car, never having looked under the hood before. That's the kind of condition they'll be in.

MR. MacNeil: But back in 1990, you saw a bit of the program we did when this flaw was discovered, NASA's chief scientist, Lennard Fisk, said this service, as he called it, was going to be fairly straightforward.

PROF. BAHCALL: If so, Len was being optimistic. I don't know why he would say that. The things that they have to do -- could I show you some of the things they have to do? [using model of Hubble] For example, Kathy Thornton, who is one of the astronauts on this - -

MR. MacNeil: The woman astronaut with them?

PROF. BAHCALL: Yes. She is in charge of screwing in a solar panel that has to be reinstalled right back here. Now, if Kathy were to get the -- to twist that in the wrong way, that would be the end of this one and a half billion dollar instrument, so she's got a manual wrench which she will turn and make sure that it's going in correctly, and her associate astronaut will be watching to make sure that everything fits perfectly. Another thing they have to do is pull out that wide field camera that we saw in the, in the video. That camera comes from here, and you have to pull it all the way out. It's about the size of, oh, about a telephone booth. It's a huge thing.

MR. MacNeil: It looked like -- on that animation -- it looked like putting a cassette into a camera or something, but it's the size of a telephone booth?

PROF. BAHCALL: That's roughly the area and volume. And they have to get it to a precision which is about the thickness of my fingernail. They have to take the old one out and slide the new one in to that precision.

MR. MacNeil: If they don't get -- if they don't get it -- if they get it slightly off, what does it do to the telescope?

PROF. BAHCALL: It means the telescope can't see clearly. It's like your prescription were wrong on your glasses or my prescription.

MR. MacNeil: So it's going to be very difficult to get all these things right?

PROF. BAHCALL: It is extremely difficult to do all of them.

MR. MacNeil: Do you agree with that, Mr. Roland, it's going to be very difficult to be really successful in this mission?

PROF. ROLAND: Well, I'll take Dr. Bahcall's word for it, but I wonder what has happened since Lennard Fisk made his predictions, and, in fact, since the whole history of the program because the profile of the space telescope was originally sold as being better going up on the shuttle because it would be easy and inexpensive to visit the space telescope and repair it. In fact, the original plan was to return the space telescope to Earth every five years and refurbish it and re-launch it.

MR. MacNeil: I asked Dr. Fisk about that two years ago, and he said there was too much danger in doing that, of damaging it by bringing it back to Earth and re-launching it.

PROF. ROLAND: Well, that's the nature of my concern. I surely wish them well with this mission, and I hope the mission works, but this mission is being portrayed to the public as a demonstration that the space shuttle is a good way to run our space enterprises and that it's a capable vehicle for putting up a space station. But if they can't do what they, themselves, called years ago a simple mission that they portrayed as nothing more difficult than changing the oil and rotating the tires, how are they going to erect the space station in the future, i.e., that I think the very difficulty of this mission demonstrates that all of these enterprises are far more expensive, far more difficult, and even life threatening than NASA has led us to believe.

MR. MacNeil: In that same interview, Dr. Fisk told us in 1990 the wisest thing we did with the Hubble was to put it in an orbit that was accessible to the shuttle. Now, some scientists would have preferred it, as I gather, in a much higher orbit, because the Earth wouldn't be in the way in -- of its vision part of the day, but was that the wisest thing they did, to put it in this kind of orbit so the shuttle could service it?

PROF. ROLAND: Well, if you design the space telescope to fly on the shuttle in the first place -- but that's the major question, whether that was the appropriate way to do it, and Dr. Bahcall himself was involved in those debates, and he knows he often challenged NASA on the wisdom of that, i.e., that the science of the space telescope was being subordinated to the politics of the space shuttle program. Of course, you'd want it in geosynchronous orbit where it can not only constantly conduct its missions, but it's also easier to transmit its messages back to Earth instead of having to use relay satellites as we do now. The problem is that we don't have a launch vehicle that could put that back into geosynchronous orbit. We had one at the end of the Apollo program but we gave it away and developed the shuttle in its place. The Soviet Union, by the way, has one that could put it in geosynchronous orbit.

MR. MacNeil: Do you regret now that it's designed to go in this orbit close enough to Earth so that the shuttle could reach it?

PROF. BAHCALL: Well, I'm delighted it was, because otherwise we would be stuck with a very fuzzy mission, with a very fuzzy vision on the telescope.

MR. MacNeil: Assuming the same mistakes had been made?

PROF. BAHCALL: Yes. I think I was wrong 20 years ago, and I'm awfully glad that we can service the telescope now. I think what we didn't realize 20 years ago, and perhaps what we didn't realize during the planning, was how many things could go wrong in such a complex instrument. This is the first time we had a telescope in space with so many different instruments which was so complicated and which was so incredibly important and which was so incredibly important to all of science that each of the instruments work well. Under those circumstances, I think the people that decided we needed a mission to repair the telescope were very foresighted.

MR. MacNeil: Uh huh.

PROF. ROLAND: Robin, if I might interject.

MR. MacNeil: Yes.

PROF. ROLAND: This was what Robert Smith was talking about in your leader, that you don't -- the ideal for profile for developing such an instrument is much more like the Viking landers to Mars in the 1970s where you developed two or even three spacecraft because a large part of the development cost is actually in the development, not in building the craft. Once you've figured out how to do it, you can build two or three. You send one up, you test it, you see if it has problems. If so, you fix the second one before that goes up, and you proceed incrementally through these. They are cheaper to build. They're cheaper to launch. And then you don't have any of these problems of having to use a fabulously expensive shuttle launch to go up and repair them.

MR. MacNeil: Sure.

PROF. BAHCALL: I'd like to respond to that. I think the issue isn't what we should have done in 1960 or in 1970. I think we could well have done things differently. I think the present NASA administrator, the present NASA team, the current administration have a different view about how we should do space science. I think they would like to do it more efficiently, the smaller craft, perhaps along the lines that are being suggested here. But what we're awfully lucky about is that we have the shuttle and we have heroic astronauts with extraordinary talents that are willing to attempt something that no other nation in the world could begin to do or would even think of doing.

MR. MacNeil: So in -- yes, Mr. Roland.

PROF. ROLAND: Well, I think that's all true, and I agree, but I am not as convinced as Dr. Bahcall is that the NASA administration is committed to this because their major enterprise right now is to sell the space station which is another, another program designed exactly the way this one was --

MR. MacNeil: Let me come back to that in a moment. Taking Dr. Bahcall's lead, let's just come back to the present and what's faced here. I saw one description of this, that it would be like trying to replace components in your television set totally from the outside with boxing gloves on because the, because the working conditions are so crude and so, so physically gross compared to the fine delicacy that you referred to. If they fail to make it work this time, will they have another chance? This mission alone is costing $690 million, I gather.

PROF. BAHCALL: I'm not sure they'll have another chance. I think they have planned but I think there is an awful lot of stake here in terms of momentum and in terms of people's enthusiasm for the program. So we will be in real trouble if this mission fails.

MR. MacNeil: For -- what is the loss to science if they can't make it work properly, as it was designed to work?

PROF. BAHCALL: Well, the loss to science is that there will be visions of the universe and whole components of the universe that we will never learn about if we can't make this telescope work.

MR. MacNeil: Never learn about?

PROF. BAHCALL: Well, you and I won't have an opportunity, maybe not even our children have an opportunity to learn about. There are questions that we would like to answer that we require the clear vision of a telescope. We'd like to know what makes the most distant, most luminous objects in the universe shine. But in order to find out, we have to get a very clear picture of those objects with a telescope like the space telescope. No other nation is capable of putting up a space telescope. We'd like to look in the very centers of galaxies to find out if they contain black holes. We need the space telescope.

MR. MacNeil: Black holes which are very compressed matter.

PROF. BAHCALL: Very.

MR. MacNeil: So compressed that it emits no light.

PROF. BAHCALL: But they do pull the stars close to the black hole, in the center of the galaxy, and in order to detect whether or not those black holes are present, we need to look for the stars that are compressed together, very close together. Also, we'd like to know what the size of the universe is, and in order to do that, we have to find special stars, stars that indicate distance among many thousands of quite typical stars.

MR. MacNeil: Flawed though it is, what has science gained from Hubble? I mean, we talked about the pictures being blurry but some of the pictures are clear, are they not?

PROF. BAHCALL: Some of the pictures are clear. There are some of the things that a telescope can do even with blurry vision. For example, one of the programs that I am most interested in is looking at the most distant objects in the universe, using them as bright flashlights to illuminate the medium between us and them. And according to the colors that they are blocked out by the material between us and the most distant objects, we can know what the objects are, what they're made of, and how far away they are. And the colors that are most important for that are the colors that are not passed by the Earth's atmospheres, colors in the ultraviolet, so all of those programs which have to do with finding out gaseous material between us and, and the most distant objects, those programs we can do even with the fuzzy vision, and the space telescope has found, for example, 20 times as many purely hydrogen clouds as were ever expected to be in the local vicinity. Those may be the building blocks from which galaxies are made.

MR. MacNeil: Okay. Now, let's talk about the consequences for NASA, Mr. Roland, failing this mission. You began to talk about its consequences on the, on the space station, for the space station.

PROF. ROLAND: Right. And I think that's the major issue. Like Dr. Bahcall, I hope this mission doesn't fail, but if there's any measure of fail, it will raise still more questions about NASA's ability to build a still more complicated project like the space station, relying on the shuttle and space walks the way we're doing, and it also raises the larger issue of whether or not manned space flight in the way that we've been conducting it for the last 35 years is really the best way to do our activities in space. We've spent 2/3 of our space budget over those 35 years on manned space flight, and yet, all of the real returns we've gotten from space, except psychological returns, have been from our unmanned missions, our deep probes into space and our satellites in Earth orbit that not only give us communication, weather, but also science as well, and I would like to see us investing a little more in those automated spacecraft which aren't as expensive and aren't as dangerous and a little less in the manned space flight from which the payoff hasn't really been very good.

MR. MacNeil: So is it unfair to ask you and people like you who have that point of view, do you really hope this mission succeeds, or would you rather it failed so that that would pretty well put an end to the manned space flights developing in the future, and you could get back to the unmanned pure science missions that you would like to see?

PROF. ROLAND: Well, I don't think I want to see this mission fail but I must admit that ever since the Challenger accident, I've wondered what it will take to get us to seriously reevaluate the manned space flight program, and --

MR. MacNeil: And this would?

PROF. ROLAND: -- and it appears that we onlydo it in crises. And so I'm not wishing for this to fail. I wish it would be the occasion when we'd engage in serious reconsideration.

MR. MacNeil: Do you agree briefly, Dr. Bahcall, that the failure of this mission would put not only the space station but the whole issue, given the mood of Congress at the moment, the whole issue of further manned space flight in jeopardy?

PROF. BAHCALL: Yes. Congress has warned us of that, but I would like to take issue. Can I?

MR. MacNeil: If you do it very quickly.

PROF. BAHCALL: The one issue I would like to take -- like to argue is that as a citizen, not as an expert, I find the inspiration and the thrill and the achievement of the manned space program, apart from its scientific benefits, as one of the great accomplishments of mankind of this 20th century. And I'm sure it's going to be in the history books.

MR. MacNeil: Okay, gentlemen, thank you. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the Russian elections, Commerce Sec. Ron Brown, and a Richard Rodriguez essay. UPDATE - RUSSIAN ELECTIONS

MR. LEHRER: Now the upcoming Russian elections. In 10 days, Russian voters will elect members of a new parliament. The old parliament was disbanded in a violent confrontation between President Yeltsin and conservative opponents. A new constitution that gives regions more say in the Russian government is also on the balance. Special Correspondent Simon Marks looked at the campaign in a Siberian town 2500 miles from Moscow.

MR. MARKS: The long months of a Siberian winter are about to descend on the River Ob in Novosibirsk. For four months a year, the waterway is frozen over, so now the city's lumberyard is working overtime to process one of the region's most valuable resources. Russia has come to rely on a seemingly endless supply of wood and other staple products from Siberia. Home to 1/5 of the country's population, it supplies more than half the nation's exports. When Siberia passes judgment on President Yeltsin and his government in this month's nationwide parliamentary elections, its voice will be influential. More than a quarter of the members of the new parliament will be chosen by Siberian voters. And many voices in Siberia are expressing hostility towards the country's leaders. Sawmill worker Gennady Lukin says the political process in Russia won't deliver any change.

GENNADY LUKIN, Sawmill Worker: [speaking through interpreter] There may be a change of power but it'll be the same people in charge, different surnames but the same personalities. They've always been bureaucrats, and they'll remain bureaucrats. They'll paint themselves a different color and change their names. That's all.

MR. MARKS: The people of Novosibirsk boast that their city lies at the geographical center of Russia. This year it celebrates the 100th anniversary of its birth. It was built in 1893 as a junction o the massive Trans-Siberian Railroad. Today it's still a key stop on that railroad, a crossroads where a cross-section of public opinion on the nation's problems can be found. Dentist Alexander Popov, from Khabarovsk in the Russian Far East, says that by violently crushing his opponents in Moscow, Boris Yeltsin has lost much support.

ALEXANDER POPOV, Dentist: [speaking through interpreter] I don't believe in him anymore. He's lost all credibility. I voted for him in the past, but I won't for vote for him this time, no way. Each person in our country can now only pin his hopes on himself. No one else gives you anything. We're at a complete dead end.

MR. MARKS: On another platform, different opinions within the same family. Igor Krasnov and his mother are preparing for the 51- hour journey to Moscow. Igor is a small businessman there, like most young people, he says. His mother is moving to Moscow to live with him. His auto repair shop has flourished in the new economic conditions created by Boris Yeltsin's reforms, and he's backing the president who introduced them.

IGOR KRASNOV, Businessman: [speaking through interpreter] He's the one who will carry out the new policies which have given us the opportunity to work. My future depends on that, so I will support him.

MR. MARKS: But his Aunt Galina says that for her generation life has never been tougher. She says she'll vote for any candidate who is for the people and says her nephew is wrong. Where he sees opportunity, she sees social anarchy.

GALINA POLZHKOVA: [speaking through interpreter] What happened in Moscow couldn't take place here. In Novosibirsk, we keep ourselves in hand. What I object to is all the speculation and black marketeering that's rampant. It doesn't give those who earn only a little a chance to live. I only get a small pension, and it's difficult to get by.

MR. MARKS: The Trans-Siberian pulls out each day to the echoes of a song about Novosibirsk played over the station's public address system. The train heads for Moscow, where President Yeltsin decisively dealt with his hard-line opposition, but here in Novosibirsk, the debate between his supporters and detractors is still as alive as ever. One of Yeltsin's main local opponents is Anatoly Sechov, who chairs Novosibirsk's regional council, one of the few councils nationwide to decline President Yeltsin's October invitation to disband itself. He says the council will continue to serve as a focus of opposition to the president, claiming that only the people can vote to resolve it.

ANATOLY SECHOV, Chairman, Novosibirsk Council: [speaking through interpreter] How can it be right when the president of a country, a person who symbolizes a guarantee of democracy and statehood, observation of the Constitution? He gave his oath on the Constitution, and then simply ripped it up. How can that be right? Some people try to explain it as a necessity but necessity which leads to bloodshed. That's not necessity.

MR. MARKS: On the other side of town, Anatoly Manokhin, President Yeltsin's personal representative in Novosibirsk, he's standing for election to the new parliament and says while President Yeltsin is committed to democracy, he's more committed to ensuring his economic policies are put into place.

ANATOLY MANOKHIN, Yeltsin Representative: [speaking through interpreter] However you look at them, these elections are a step in the right direction toward creating a democratic society, even if the new parliament has few rights compared with your system. The point is that in the current condition of economic and financial crisis, I think economic policy should be determined by one strong power, but I am convinced that these are democratic elections.

MR. MARKS: Novosibirsk is still a city that has barely felt the warmth of the free market. Hard-liners in the city's council even voted to suspend privatization, the central plank in the president's reform program. Boris Yeltsin's supporters here and across the country argue that what the president now needs is a chance to move ahead with economic reform unhindered by his old parliamentary opponents. But many of Novosibirsk's voters say they're unimpressed with the president's record so far and they're determined to back opposition candidates who promise to continue to fighting the harsher effects of economic change. Those effects have been clearly felt here at the Novosibirsk Vacuum Tube Plant, one of the city's largest employers. Four workers in ten have been laid off at a defense factory that once produced the navigation systems for missiles, spacecraft, and satellites. Now workers manufacture computer chips for pocket calculators and watches. With no demand for the factory's old products, one-fifth of the plant has been closed, including one area that was shut down before it had ever been used. Scientists Alexander Feodorov and Anatoly Gertsev have spent more than 50 years at the factory between them.

ALEXANDER FEODOROV, Scientist: [speaking through interpreter] I feel grief that our country has no need of the things which we could make. I feel helpless, but there's nothing I can do to change the situation. And I feel grief for our people who receive such miserable wages and who could make things which the country actually needs.

ANATOLY GERTSEV, Scientist: [speaking through interpreter] The government we have today doesn't think about the people. Look at the people on the streets of Novosibirsk. Nearly everyone is out selling anything they can. You can find one or two millionaires but there are many old women who don't have enough to live on and who are forced to go out and sell whatever they can.

MR. MARKS: The food stores of Novosibirsk are well stocked but prices have soared as they have across the country. Many Siberians though feel their region is suffering unfairly. They pay as much for food as everyone else but the prices they're paid by the state for supplying the rest of the country with raw materials haven't increase. Retired Colonel Ivan Alabiyev, a red army veteran, is one shopper who thinks Siberia gets a raw deal from Russia.

IVAN ALABIYEV: [speaking through interpreter] The riches of Siberia go elsewhere. Of all the things that there are in Siberia, Siberians themselves receive very little.

MR. MARKS: And yet, few fires burn for full-scale Siberian independence. With its harsh climate, Siberia relies on imported food from across the former USSR. Most people here don't envisage any future for the region outside Russia. But regional leaders do say that unless living standards improve, many voters will remain hostile to economic reforms that originally in Moscow.

ANATOLY SECHOV: [speaking through interpreter] In reality, a significant portion of our people have begun to eat less, to buy less clothing, to limit themselves in everything. Unemployment has appeared here for the first time. A whole layer of people has appeared who are unable to provide for themselves. They are forced to try to make ends meet, and it's extremely difficult for them. That's what the past couple of years of reform have given us, and that's what determines the attitude of the people towards what is happening in our country.

MR. MARKS: So from the local council chamber, members say they'll continue placing obstacles in President Yeltsin's way. And hard- liners running for parliament in Novosibirsk say they'll create problems for Boris Yeltsin's new Russia in Moscow as well, none of which much bothers the president's representative in Novosibirsk. Anatoly Manokhin says the country's new constitution means the whole debate between reformers and hard-liners is becoming simply irrelevant.

ANATOLY MANOKHIN, Yeltsin Representative: [speaking through interpreter] I think that the new parliament will be no better and may be worse than the old. A real threat exists of that happening. The only thing that gives cause for hope is that under the new Constitution the president will have the right to dissolve the parliament.

MR. MARKS: Boris Yeltsin and his supporters say Russia must get on with the job of reforming itself. Those who disagree with his methods now question whether Boris Yeltsin believes in the development of a real opposition in a democratic system.

ANATOLY SECHOV: [speaking through interpreter] If that moment ever comes, I will say, thank God, Russia is fortunate indeed, the president has come to the conclusion that an opposition is needed and should act. Whether he'll ever decide that or not, I don't know.

MR. MARKS: Two days' train ride away in Moscow the old guard at the Russian White House have been swept aside but in towns like Novosibirsk, a new threat to Boris Yeltsin is emerging and could test the president as he takes his nation further on its uncertain journey. NEWSMAKER

MR. LEHRER: Now, a newsmaker interview with the Secretary of Commerce, Ron Brown. He has just returned from a week in South Africa designed to encourage U.S. investment there. Nearly two dozen U.S. corporate executives went with him. U.S. economic sanctions against South Africa were lifted last week after almost a decade and after the country began moving from white minority to black majority rule. Mr. Secretary, welcome.

SEC. BROWN: Good to be with you.

MR. LEHRER: Welcome home. You just arrived a few hours ago.

SEC. BROWN: Just a few hours ago.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. What was the agreement? You signed an agreement with the South African government about U.S. investment. What was it about?

SEC. BROWN: We signed an OPEC agreement which really lifts the confidence level of American business and industry to want to invest in South Africa, to want to enter into an increased and enhanced commercial relationship with South Africa. It provides risk insurance. It provides financing. It does the kinds of things that businessmen want to see in place before they decide to engage in commercial activity.

MR. LEHRER: As a practical matter, what are the opportunities for U.S. business and industry?

SEC. BROWN: I think they're extraordinary. All of the businessmen and women who we took as a part of the delegation came back exhilarated, ready to move forward with plans for investment and trade. Clearly there is great potential in that economy once, in fact, all the people of South Africa start to be included. We gave some considerable focus to black South African entrepreneurs, businessmen and women. It's clear that if there's going to be stability after the election on April 27th, there has to be economic growth and, and the fruits of that growth have to be shared much more broadly than they've been shared before.

MR. LEHRER: But where are the major opportunities? Are they in just the fact of a, of a huge marketplace for American goods, or is it a place where U.S. industry should go and set up factories and build things? Where do you, where do you target?

SEC. BROWN: Well, trade is a two-way street. Obviously, we want to see the South African economy grow because the future of our economy and its ability to grow is going to be dependent upon these emerging markets all over the world. You have to have someone to sell your goods to. Our economy is now more and dependent upon exports, and the fact is that American exports equal American jobs. I think the crucial thing about South Africa is that most believe, as I do, that as the economy of South Africa goes, so goes the economy of all of southern Africa and maybe even the economy of the entire African continent.

MR. LEHRER: Why?

SEC. BROWN: Because South Africa's such a key to the future of Africa. That's where there is the greatest amount of industrialization. That's where there is the most infrastructure, and now that the chains of apartheid are being broken and we can release the dynamic energy of all of those black South Africans who have just been waiting for the day where they can be included, the potential is just awesome.

MR. LEHRER: But you're talking about politics, aren't you?

SEC. BROWN: Well, politics and economics often go hand in hand.

MR. LEHRER: If U.S. and other foreign investment does not come to South Africa, looking at it from their point if view, what are the stakes for South Africa?

SEC. BROWN: Oh, the stakes are very great. It seems clear that the expectations of the people are very high. The fact is that you're going to have to have considerable economic growth in order to meet those expectations. There also has to be not only --

MR. LEHRER: You mean, it's not enough just to end apartheid?

SEC. BROWN: No, clearly not. I mean, obviously we're thrilled about the kind of political changes that have taken place, the move towards a democracy, the move towards one man, one vote, the kind of a non-racial society that the leadership of South Africa is now committed to, but that in and of itself is not going to be enough. Democratization is wonderful but democratization without economic development is not going to mean a lot in the real lives of real people.

MR. LEHRER: Did they make that case to you very strongly?

SEC. BROWN: They made it very strongly and that's why I returned.

MR. LEHRER: But what evidence? What did they say to you?

SEC. BROWN: Well, I talked to everybody I could talk to, from President DeKlerk to Mr. Mandela to Chief Buthelezi to the trade finance minister, Minister Keys, to Foreign Minister Botha, to black South African businessmen and women, to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, to the captains of industry there, and then to ordinary people in Alexandra and Suweto and Durbin and in Cape Town, and there seems to be an attitude that is a "can do" attitude, that this is too great an opportunity to let pass us by, that we have to make this work. I got the feeling that there is an irreversible transition taking place in South Africa, and I think that's why the confidence level of those businessmen and women who I took with me was very high when they came back as well.

MR. LEHRER: Of course, transition does not necessarily mean stability, does it? I mean, they're not there yet.

SEC. BROWN: They're not. There will be some significant bumps in the road. There is still too much violence. Some of it is probably a political violence but some of it is, is really due to the gross disparity of income between blacks and whites in South Africa. I made the point to President DeKlerk that the government has the responsibility to enforce the law, to curtail and eliminate violence, and he agreed with that.

MR. LEHRER: What do you say now to an American who has been, who has been supporting economic sanctions against South Africa for all these years and say, okay, Brown, I'm listening to you, but if we go in there and support South African business, aren't we going to be just helping the whites who control the economy, aren't they going to still be in charge of the economy in the larger way? Don't they own the factory? Don't they own the businesses?

SEC. BROWN: And that is a legitimate question, and that's exactly why wetook the kind of delegation that we took, and that's why President Clinton gave me the assignment he gave me. He said that he wanted the delegation to focus on black South African business development. Obviously, we have to deal with the White South African business community. They're going to be very important to economic growth as well, but we have to reach out beyond them, and that's exactly what we did. I think --

MR. LEHRER: How do you do that though?

SEC. BROWN: I think you can set up joint ventures. There are a number of people who went with this who were interested in being in joint venture relationships, marketing relationships with black South African entrepreneurs. I think we might look to tripartheid arrangements. And one of the most encouraging things about the visit was we were able --

MR. LEHRER: Tripartheid meaning --

SEC. BROWN: Major corporations in South Africa, American corporations, and black South African entrepreneurs. One of the most encouraging things was that we served as a catalyst, we were a vehicle for bringing black and white South Africans together, some of whom hadn't even been talking before about doing business together. And I think that since we had such a tremendous role in bringing an end to apartheid because of sanctions, because of the pressure that was put on by the United States and others in the International Community, we ought to be there to help in economic development and making sure that black South Africans benefit from that economic development.

MR. LEHRER: Is there any question then in your mind that there was a serious connection between the economic sanctions and what happened politically?

SEC. BROWN: No question in my mind whatsoever. That economy was brought to its knees. I also think that isolation is very difficult for a nation or a people to take over the long-term. And you could just see the warmth with which we were received. Just being accepted by the International Community, again, I think has built us some momentum. We wanted to keep that momentum going, realizing the time frame we've been operating in. Mr. Mandela came to the United States in late November. He and President DeKlerk asked that sanctions be removed. Congress moved quickly. It's just a week ago Monday that the legislation removing sanctions came to the White House, was on the President's desk. He signed it on Tuesday, and on Thursday, I was leading a trade and investment delegation to South Africa. I think the South Africans appreciated that in an extraordinary way.

MR. LEHRER: Now you had what, 25 U.S. executives with you?

SEC. BROWN: Yes.

MR. LEHRER: What, what are their concerns about doing what you want them to do?

SEC. BROWN: Really their concerns have to do with the stability and making sure we get from here to the 27th of April, election day, and move through that process with a minimum of violence, with that country coming together. I also met with the far right, with General Villieune, and a lot of people are concerned --

MR. LEHRER: What was that about?

SEC. BROWN: Well, it was an interesting meeting. I found him an interesting man. He's Afrikaner. He's got concerns about what happens to the minority population in South Africa. I have some experience in the concerns of the minority population in America, so I was sensitive to that. I met with Chief Buthelezi, who has the same kinds of concerns. My impression was that everyone wants to try to make this work. I'm not saying that all the problems are behind us, that there aren't some more obstacles, there are, but I have a feeling that the South Africans are an irrevocable track to get them worked out.

MR. LEHRER: Did you feel empowered to tell them to look, these various factions from, from, starting with the president and Mr. Mandela on down, look them straight in the eye and say, look, friends, if you want foreign investment, U.S. investment in your country, you're going to have to maintain stability, you're going to have to keep your people from killing each other, you're going to have to get from here to there?

SEC. BROWN: Jim, I said it just about that way. I hope as effectively as that. But yes, I did. I was very frank with them, and they were open to that kind of frank exchange of views.

MR. LEHRER: And they wanted you to say it to the other guys as well?

SEC. BROWN: They absolutely did. There wasn't a meeting that I left where I didn't get some advice on how to deal with the next meeting I was going to, but I appreciated that, and there was a warmth and an openness and a desire to really make things happen, and I think the view that our presence could be used as a vehicle to really bridge that gap, to really make some progress.

MR. LEHRER: Just in personal terms, did you think you'd ever, as a black official of the U.S. government, be there doing what you were doing?

SEC. BROWN: I, I really didn't, and it did have a great personal impact on me to be sitting there opposite President DeKlerk as, as an African-American, as the first African-American Secretary of Commerce, and when you look at the ancestry of African-Americans in the United States, brought here in chains as a part of the international slave trade, and here I am talking about international trade policy of the United States of America.

MR. LEHRER: Saying right on.

SEC. BROWN: That's right.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Secretary, thank you.

SEC. BROWN: Thank you, Jim. ESSAY - HOLIER THAN THOU?

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight, essayist Richard Rodriguez of the Pacific News Service considers sexual misconduct charges against members of the clergy.

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ: I'm standing in front of a Catholic church, my Catholic church, my parish, a loyal son of the church. I tell you this so you will understand I am not neutral on the subject of nuns or priests. I cannot imagine my life or my death apart from the theology they taught me, the centuries of tradition to which they connected me, the ritual, the prayer, the lives of triumph and holiness and human failure, all that this church represents. But Catholics don't always admire their priests or even like their priests. There are Catholic countries in Europe and in Latin America which have long traditions of anti- clericalism. Priests have sometimes associated themselves with one side of a political struggle, sided with the landowner or with the poor perhaps, with the palace or not. Priests bravely journey far from home, master foreign tongues, carve paths through the jungle. There is, nonetheless, a long habit, an adolescent habit of mocking the priests. Priests are pictured as dour virgins in the films of Federico Fellini. American film priests. American film priests, by contrast, have been portrayed either by the sentimental Barry Fitzgerald or the tough guy Chaplain Pat O'Brien, or Hollywood settles for the middle-of-the-road Bing Crosby, a regular guy. But the old women of Catholic villages in Poland or in Guatemala always knew when Father was sleeping with his housekeeper or Father was drunk this morning. Graham Greene wrote a novel about a whisky priest in Mexico called The Power and the Glory. The whisky priest is drunk even as he prays over the chalice of wine. There's a wonderful irony in Graham Greene's novel. Greene's whisky priest is a true moral hero, a criminal during Mexico's years of anti- Catholic prosecution, saying Mass in a stupor at the risk of death. Greene's whisky priest is heroic in spite of his humanity and within his humanity. It is hard to imagine a novelist writing about one of today's failed priests with similar generosity. We are as unforgiving about sex as we are obsessed with it. Our national piety about sexual indiscretion is as old as The Scarlet Letter, and then we Americans are levelers. We don't like people lording over us. We snigger when Jimmy Swaggart, the televangelist, falls, and Johnny Carson jokes about Jim Bakker when Bakker is led from a courtroom bound in chains. Nuns on TV or in the movies are either women hiding behind girlish giggles or closet sadists. In a country that equates sexual experience with adulthood, how can we believe in chastity? On the other hand, how can a country that equates sexuality with maturity be surprised by sexually active 11-year- olds? And yet, we are surprised, just as we are shocked about pedophiles in the rectory, that we are aroused when teenage girls sell us Calvin Klein underwear on TV and Marky Mark looms on a billboard over Times Square. A few months ago, "60 Minutes" ran an exposer on the archbishop of Santa Fe, who allegedly had affairs with several women. The archbishop was untrue to his vow of chastity, but I think of all the weddings priests witness during their lives, the Catholic bride and the Catholic groom promise life-long fidelity, "till death do us part," and then they get divorced. Our priests and rabbis and televangelists are more like us than we want to believe. "Pray for me," priests have been asking those of us in the congregation for as long as I can remember, those of us in the pew, who were inclined to forget that Father, after all, lived in our world and reflected our own moral lives. He saw our billboards. He knew our divorces and knew that we considered his virginity comic and unmanly. You see them now on the news, hustled by their lawyers into courtrooms, modern day Reverend Dimmesdales. They are psychoanalyzed on the amoral afternoon talk shows, failures, perverts, hypocrites, sinners. They tell us more about ourselves than we want to know. I'm Richard Rodriguez. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Thursday, fugitive drug lord Pablo Escobar was shot to death by police in Colombia, the North American Free Trade Agreement cleared its last major hurdle as the new prime minister of Canada gave his approval, and the space shuttle Endeavour had a successful launch on an 11-day mission to fix the giant Hubble Telescope. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim. That's the NewsHour for tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night with political analysis from Mark Shields among other things. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.