The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

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

MS. WARNER: And I'm Margaret Warner in New York. After the News Summary this Friday, we assess the impact on the nation's psyche of lifting the trade embargo against Vietnam, Paul Solman explains the story behind today's unemployment figures, our regular political analyst, Mark Shields, discusses the week in politics with Paul Gigot, and essayist Clarence Page talks about freedom of expression. NEWS SUMMARY

MS. WARNER: The Federal Reserve usually doesn't say what it's doing behind closed doors even after it's done. But today Chairman Alan Greenspan took the unusual step of announcing publicly that the Fed had just decided to push up a key short-term interest rate. It's the so-called Federal Fund's rate, the rate banks charge each other on overnight loans. This is the first interest rate hike by the Central Bank in five years. Chairman Greenspan said the step was designed to sustain and enhance the economic expansion, but news of the Fed's move sent stock and bond prices tumbling. By the closing bell the Blue Chip Industrial Average had lost nearly 100 points. In Washington, Treasury Sec. Bentsen commented on the Fed's move during the White House briefing this afternoon.

LLOYD BENTSEN, Secretary of the Treasury: Now the Federal Reserve has announced its intentions to raise short-term interest rates by a small amount. We would anticipate that would mean roughly 1/4 of a point. Such an increase was, in fact, anticipated in our forecast. It is not unexpected. We still think the economy will grow at a 3 percent rate this year. Inflation appears to be well contained at the present time. The Federal Reserve is an independent central bank, and we respect its independence.

MS. WARNER: The most likely impact on the Fed's move on consumers could be an increase in the return on Certificates of Deposit and money market funds. It isn't yet clear if the move will trigger higher rates on business and consumer loans. In other economic news, the Labor Department reported the nation's unemployment rate was 6.7 percent in January. That is .3 percent higher than the figure reported for December, but only because of the new way the statistic is being calculated. Actually, unemployment dropped last night. We'll have a fuller explanation of all this in a report from Paul Solman later in the program. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton shot back at new critics of the administration's health care reform plan today. Both the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Round Table came out against the plan this week. Mrs. Clinton made her response to a meeting of health professionals and political leaders in Philadelphia, hosted by former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop. She said it was time to cut through the smoke screen. She said the status quo was the real enemy and charged very large businesses will continue to make the best deals, and everybody else will pick up the costs. Vice President Gore today announced a new federal effort to stop crime in public housing projects. The Department of Housing & Urban Development will allocate more than $800 million to the program. Secret Service agents will be sent to the projects to consult on security issues, FBI agents will train Housing Authority police. The Senate today passed a non-binding resolution on silence in the schools. It calls on public schools to allow students a period of silent contemplation each day. The vote was 78 to 8. It was sponsored by Missouri Republican John Danforth. He said it would give students time to reflect on their religion, their values, and what they want to accomplish during the day.

MS. WARNER: A genetically-engineered hormone to increase milk production in cows is causing quite a stir. It's called Bovine Growth Hormone, or BGH, and it went on sale today. Cows produce BGH naturally, but the Monsanto Company has produced a chemical version that could be injected into the animals to produce their milk production 10 percent. Opponents are waging a campaign against it, dumping containers of milk and asking a federal court to halt production. Several major grocery chains worried about consumer response are telling their milk suppliers not to use it. The FDA approved BGH after nine years of study. But critics say there still isn't enough evidence to prove it's safe.

MR. LEHRER: A U.S. figure skating panel met in Colorado Springs today to consider the Olympic fate of Tonya Harding. If the five- member panel decides she has violated Olympic ethics standards, she could be removed from the U.S. Olympic Team. The panel is looking at evidence Harding was involved in the attack on Nancy Kerrigan. A recommendation is expected tomorrow. Harding continued to train in Portland, Oregon, today for this month's winter games in Norway. She has admitted knowing about the attack afterward and withholding evidence about it. She has denied her ex-husband's accusation she actually worked with him to plan it.

MS. WARNER: Vietnam welcomed a lifting of the U.S. embargo today and a Vietnamese official said this country will soon open a liaison office in Washington. He also promised Hanoi will continue searching for American MIA's. President Clinton ended the trade ban yesterday, citing Hanoi's cooperation on the MIA issue. We'll have more on the story right after the News Summary. The U.S. military bid farewell to Les Aspin today. The former Defense Secretary was honored in a ceremony at Ft. Myer, Virginia. His successor, William Perry, was sworn in last night soon after receiving unanimous Senate confirmation.

MR. LEHRER: Shelling killed at least eight people in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo today. Two of the victims were children. They were in a Muslim neighborhood waiting in line for food when the shells hit. Gaby Rado of Independent Television News has this report.

GABY RADO, ITN: Sarajevo's Kosovo Hospital and another day of agony. After the first Serbian shell exploded, people rushed over to help the injured, and then they, in turn, were hit by two more shells. They were queuing up for the regular handout of humanitarian aid on which the women, children, and elderly people left in Dobrinja depend entirely for their survival. Tears from the mortuary attendant who has seen this many times before. It's just routine for the hospital staff. Yesterday, 223 shells hit Sarajevo and six died. The bleak housing estate of Dobrinja is one of the most dangerous front lines of the Bosnian war. Death and mutilation here are an everyday fact of life. On the Geneva peace talks adjourned last month, there was nothing but gloom today. The Bosnian Muslim President Alija Izetbegovic said he won't even bother to attend their resumption next week as they would be, in his words, a waste of time. The trouble is only an overall political solution will end the suffering of Sarajevo. Incidents like today's bring new depths of despair to people who now feel they're only being kept alive to be ripped apart by Serbian shells.

MR. LEHRER: And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to putting Vietnam behind, the numbers of unemployment, analysis by Mark Shields and Paul Gigot, and a Clarence Page essay. FOCUS - FINAL CHAPTER

MS. WARNER: First tonight, has President Clinton helped close this country's long and deep divisions over the Vietnam War? Yesterday, the President lifted the 19-year-old economic embargo on Vietnam. The move was denounced by some veterans groups and relatives of Americans still missing in action, but other veterans said Mr. Clinton was right to act now. The President announced the move last evening in the somber setting of the Roosevelt Room of the White House. Mr. Clinton, who avoided service in the Vietnam War, was surrounded by veterans. Among them were Senators who served in Vietnam nearly 30 years ago and whose votes in favor of lifting the embargo last week gave the President critical political cover for his decision. The President said his move would help efforts to account for those still missing in action.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Whatever the Vietnam War may have been done in dividing our country in the past, today our nation is one in honoring those who served, in pressing for answers about all those who did not return. This decision today I believe renews that commitment and our constant, constant effort never to forget those until our job is done. Those who have sacrificed deserve a full and final accounting. I am absolutely convinced, as are so many in the Congress who serve there, and so many Americans who have studied this issue, that this decision today will help to ensure that fullest possible accounting.

MS. WARNER: We now get the perspectives of three men who fought in the war and one who covered Vietnam from the first days of American involvement in the early '60s. The three veterans are: Michael Norman, a journalist and professor at New York University and author of a war memoir called These Good Men, Dwight Edwards, now a therapist who counsels returning vets, joins us from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and James Webb, former Secretary of the Navy who is also an author of a novel about the war, Fields of Fire, joins us from Los Angeles. Neil Sheehan covered Vietnam for the United Press International and the New York Times for nearly a decade. He's also written books about the war and post war Vietnam, including a Pulitzer Prize winner called A Bright Shining Lie. Welcome, gentlemen. Mr. Norman, let me start with you. What do you think the President's decision reflects about America as a nation?

MR. NORMAN: Well, I think more -- I think it reflects a desire on the part of the country to come to terms with what essentially was one of the most profound mistakes in American history, a mistake that's so profound I don't think we can figure out yet quite what it means and quite the lesson that we should draw from it. I agree with the message. It's long since time to close the gap between us and Vietnam, to bring the two countries together and to start some sort of rapprochement, but I have a small problem with the messenger that delivered the message, as I suspect --

MS. WARNER: You mean the President?

MR. NORMAN: Yes -- as I suspect many veterans did. You know, Henry James said that public figures, the behavior of public figures gives a certain autobiographical force to their ideas and behavior. I think the President's background left -- it left me wincing a big when he made the announcement.

MS. WARNER: Well, I'll get back to that point, but let me ask Mr. Sheehan, what in general do you think this reflects, Mr. Sheehan, about the state of the country now?

MR. SHEEHAN: Well, I think we're finally coming to the point where we can exorcise some of these ghosts of the war. The President has his own ghost. He was -- there are hundreds of thousands of young men like him who avoided the draft, including the last secretary of defense under -- Cheney -- under the Bush administration, and those who served in this -- as Mr. Norman put it -- in this immense tragedy that's so difficult to understand, but that we've really finally got to begin to dispel as that is dispel the haunting and the hatred, the hauntingness, the hatred, the bitterness, and the embargo amounted to a form of vengeance. And it was time to end the vengeance and shake hands with these people and move ahead.

MS. WARNER: Mr. Edwards, is this the way you see it?

MR. EDWARDS: I see it as a movement in the direction to close the door on the Vietnam War, to begin a painful healing process or part of the painful healing process, one that was brought about by war that was controversial, and the controversy continued after the war, and still continues, I think. This process of healing is going to be a slow and very painful process.

MS. WARNER: Well, Mr. Webb, I think what I'm hearing from your colleagues is that this is just another step in a process. Do you agree with that?

MR. WEBB: In a sense I do. I'm a person who continues to believe that what we attempted to do in Vietnam was correct, and I think as you see Vietnamese now struggling towards some sort of democracy, you can see that this particular culture will function extremely well under democracy as they have here. I think yesterday President Clinton had the opportunity to hit a grand slam home run, and in reality, what he did was sort of to come across with a bunt single. The issue is, is not just the POW issue. And I think when he couched his logic in terms of helping to resolve the POW issue, No. 1, he came across in the eyes of Asia as representing the United States as sort of on the losing end of a deal, that he had to, to give this gesture to the Vietnamese in order to get more cooperation, when in reality I think that he could have couched this as a victory. The embargo did work, but it wasn't just the POW issue that has caused us to move to this point. We have legitimate interests inside Vietnam of national policy and also of economics, and we also have an obligation for whatever people think about the nature of the war or our motivations for going in there. We have an obligation to the people who believed in us and who cooperated with us and whose lives have never been the same who have suffered greatly because of that. So as we move forward into this new era, I think it's really wrong for the President not to mention the people who stood with us as one of his concerns.

MR. EDWARDS: I think that's real important to look at those people who served us. For many of them inside the country are deprived of, of jobs because they were part of the South Vietnamese War effort, and with us going back in, or with us being there, it will allow them the opportunity to get or make a decent living, to find that the ally that they had did not desert them. And it's really important that the people there know that, the people that served in the South know that the ally that they had did not desert them.

MS. WARNER: Well, Mr. Norman, do you agree with that, that there's sort of an unpaid debt even now for Americans?

MR. NORMAN: An unpaid debt to our veterans, or --

MS. WARNER: No, to the -- well, what Mr. Edwards was saying to the South Vietnamese who fought on the American side.

MR. NORMAN: I think one of the ways to pay that debt, or to begin to pay that debt, obviously, is through the benefits that mass trade will bring to the Vietnamese culture, the infrastructure that hopefully will start to build, some of the jobs that it might start to provide, maybe some of the exchange, exchanges of scholars and medical supplies that begin when Veschy's mission went over there years ago. If that will expand, that will bring a direct, intermediate benefit to them. Sure, that's, that's why I felt this should have happened a long time ago.

MS. WARNER: Well, Mr. Sheehan, why do you think it took this long for this to happen?

MR. SHEEHAN: Because first of all this was, this was the first American war we lost, and it was the first American war in which you went off and you could get killed for nothing. That was unique in our history. When you went off to war in the history of this country, it was always a good experience basically, i.e., you went off, and if you survived, you proved your manhood, and you came home, you got a job, you ran for office on the basis of your war record. It was a proud and morally unifying thing to do. And Vietnam was a total break with that. It was very difficult. It's been very difficult for us to cope with, because it divided the country more profoundly than any war since the Civil War, and the - - I would say the embargo was essentially an act of vengeance against the people with whom we should have really made friends with in 1945, and whom we're just now beginning to make friends with I hope as a result of lifting this embargo. And also it's been very difficult for us to deal with the real issues involved. Mr. Webb spoke of the Vietnamese who fought on our side. They are the really missing in action in Vietnam. The missing in action was always a phony issue because there never were any live American prisoners in Vietnam. If you looked at it, you knew that. It was an issue that was used by a succession of administrations to beat the Vietnamese over the head with, and the Vietnamese also manipulated in earlier years. But the real missing in action were those Vietnamese we left behind who fought on the American sideand who were then abandoned. And now I hope as their economy rises, they'll begin to get a place higher in the line, and they'll be able to have a better life, and we owe it to them.

MS. WARNER: Mr. Webb, why do you think the missing in action became such a powerful emotional issue when, in fact, there were some eighty thousand missing in action from World War II, and I think eight or ten thousand from Korea, and yet after this war it became a major stumbling block and political issue? Why do you think that is?

MR. WEBB: I think there are two reasons for that. The first is this is the first war where American prisoners of war and those missing in action were used as negotiating pulls, essentially as hostages by the enemy. The Hanoi people used to call the prisoners of war their pearls literally. They knew that by holding them and by keeping the names anonymous they could heighten the emotions in this country and work to end the war sooner. The second relates to ourselves as we've attempted to resolve the issue here at home. It has been the one area since 1973 where people can come together and, and agree that we, we needed some sort of movement. But I'm really glad to see here today some agreement on the notion of the Vietnamese who were with us. It's something that has been missing in the debate all along. I was really saddened not to see it mentioned yesterday or in the debates in the Congress before this, except for a few people such as Sen. Bob Kerrey, who has been very strong on this. But Neil Sheehan said is essentially true. The way that I like to put it is I -- when I go to Vietnam -- and I've been to Vietnam five times over the last two and a half years -- I've traveled throughout the country -- I see people sitting on the streets who truly are prisoners of war. They happen to be Vietnamese. They are prisoners in their own country from a separate system because of the war. And as long as we can put it on the table from the top as a nation, with the Vietnamese government, that those people are important to us, then they will be able to take advantage of the future. If we don't say that, from the top, if it's not a message that is heard from the top, it will be very difficult even for the people inside Vietnam who are in the government, who want to reach out to these former enemies to help them. So it's got to be put into the formula somehow.

MS. WARNER: Well, Mr. Edwards, do you agree with Mr. Webb's assessment about why the POW/MIA issue became such an emotional one here and a long lasting one?

MR. EDWARDS: Yes. And I would like to say for 2200 families here in the United States it's a painful issue, a very painful issue, and for 300,000 families in Vietnam it's still a very painful issue, because there are that many people missing in action from this war, and I think that we need to work seriously to resolve that issue. We need to work on it diligently with all dispatch, because those people who need answers. The other thing is that I've been to Vietnam one time, and the time that I was there, the comments from the people that served with the South was, come back, help us, we need your help, we're struggling. That struggle -- that struggle that we fought in before together -- I'm alone now, and certainly, if you can help me, I'd appreciate it. And that touched my heart. That touched my heart, because I knew that there was unfinished business there.

MS. WARNER: Mr. Norman, what's your assessment of the POW/MIA issue, and if it was such an emotional and long lasting one, as it was, why is it now possible for the President to go ahead and do this?

MR. NORMAN: Well, if I could put on my professor's hat for a minute, first of all, it was a terrific story for journalists. It was the great mystery, were they alive, weren't they alive? Doesn't the country owes these families something? Of course, it owed them something. There was an extremely powerful lobby with the families and a very poignant lobby. They got the ear of the press just about anytime they wanted, and they had some very powerful spokesmen along the way. Why was Clinton able to make his announcement now? I thought he very cleverly forged or rallied political support to his side, broad-based political support, Republican and Democratic, Sen. Keane from Arizona, of course, being among the latter. And I think now it's -- it's just simply family time. I mean, all issues, all stories eventually come to an end, and maybe this part of this story has finally come to an end.

MS. WARNER: Wasn't this much more than a story? It was something about which the American public had deep feelings.

MR. NORMAN: Well, I still think they have deep, deep feelings, as I said in the very beginning. And this is, this is something we're still trying to learn, what did it mean? How can we understand it? And I think we'll still be struggling with that for some time to come. There have been 3,000 books or more than that written on this subject, 300 major colleges in the United States have Vietnam courses. We're going to be wrestling with this for a long time to come. But this part of it, this part of the story maybe emotionally finally spent itself out.

MS. WARNER: Mr. Edwards, because you work so closely with Vietnam vets even to this day, tell me what -- do you think this step will have any impact on them, on all of you and them?

MR. EDWARDS: I think that for some of the veterans it is going to be a significant issue to deal with, that those that feel that there should be answers to the POW issue are, are still grappling with what happened yesterday. They're still trying to get an answer. They're still trying to find satisfaction. There are still veterans trying to find some bit of satisfaction from their service in Vietnam and, and through all of what's happened to them after the war, they haven't found that, and they're searching even today for an answer, what did I do, how important was it? It's impacted on my life to a point where I'm dysfunctional. Let me know -- let me hear something good that I did.

MR. NORMAN: But the same thing is true -- the same thing can be said, Mr. Edwards, I think, if you take a look at the memoirs that were written after the Civil War, if you take a look at testimony from World War I veterans and World War II veterans. Men who have been in combat struggle with that for the rest of their lives, tried to give that experience some meaning. That's not particular to Vietnam.

MR. EDWARDS: No, it's not. It's not, and it's germane to -- it's a thing that happens to us after every war. It was just so much controversy after the Vietnam War, during the Vietnam War, after, that that question becomes even a tougher question to answer for those that fought in it. Certainly not all, but there are a number of men who -- and women -- who ask that question and grapple with it daily and have difficulty translating what they saw and what happened yesterday into a positive message for themselves.

MS. WARNER: And what about the meaning, Mr. Sheehan, of this for America's young people -- what do you -- what do you tell young people when you go out and talk about the war, and how do you find they see the war?

MR. SHEEHAN: Young people, I think, are very curious about this war, because it's all so irrational to them. They can't understand why this country would have seen a Vietnamese people who had fought for a generation for their independence from China as being pawns of China. We were supposedly stopping Chinese expansionism into Southeast Asia by fighting Ho Chi Minh, who was a Vietnamese independence leader trying to get the French out of his country. They can't understand why millions of Vietnamese perished, 95,000 members of the French expeditionary force, 58,000 Americans. This was a horrendous thing! And it is very difficult for young people to cast themselves back into those Cold War years when we were being really driven by fantasies. The war -- that's why Vietnam is such a tragedy. We fought this war, killed millions of Vietnamese, and I'm glad the Vietnamese missing in action were mentioned too tonight, because they have hundreds of thousands of missing in action for whom they will never be able to make an accounting, and they care terribly about them. When I was in Hanoi in 1989, I interviewed a woman who had lost four -- three sons, two in the French war and her husband and another son to the American war -- and she has no way of recovering the remains of the fourth son - - the thirds son who was lost in the American war. And the young people are terribly curious about this, and I think we're going to see, continue to see at colleges -- Mr. Norman mentioned the number of courses that are -- you're going to see that, because young people want to understand how in the name of God did we get in to this incredible tragedy and inflict it on ourselves and on the Vietnamese and the Cambodians and the Laotians. And we're finally, I think -- we're going to start to get at some of the answers just by facing up to the realities of it.

MS. WARNER: Jim Webb, do you agree that for young people the historical legacy of Vietnam is so totally confusing and perplexing?

MR. WEBB: I think it's totally confusing, yeah, and I think if that's what they are saying to Neil Sheehan, it probably reflects the way that he believes the history of this issue unwound and in some way reflects his, his own writings. I get something completely different, and when -- when people ask me -- when the young people ask me what this was about, or if the Veterans that I talk to are searching for some meaning, I think that there are a few things that we can come down on now without having to go through, you know, and re-fight the entire war. We went into Vietnam to attempt to help an incipient democracy, a democracy that would have grown in the next generation, meaning the next five or six years, not in the next 30 years. It's ironic when I look at the Vietnamese and when I talk to them, the veterans on both sides. Ho Chi Minh had a slogan. He said -- [speaking Vietnamese] -- which means independence and freedom. And I think that the people who were fighting on the side of Ho Chi Minh can legitimately say, yes, they did not want another foreign invader, although I --

MS. WARNER: Mr. Webb, I'm sorry, I don't mean to cut you off, but we just have to close. Let me just ask Mr. Norman about the effect he sees in young people or the impression he sees in young people, briefly.

MR. NORMAN: Yeah. I think that young people absent the political argument from that, I think young people have as much trouble understanding this particular war as they do any war, that is to say what would make anyone willing to go out and, and offer that sort of sacrifice, if you talk about the war as an existential experience? As a political experience, the only way to get them to understand it is to get Neil Sheehan in a room and get Jim Webb in a room and let them, let them talk it out. And what takes place in the dialogue in the middle is the understanding.

MS. WARNER: Well, I hope we'll do that again some time. Thank you, gentlemen, all of you. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the unemployment numbers, Shields and Gigot, and a Clarence Page essay. FOCUS - HEAD COUNT

MR. LEHRER: Now the unemployment numbers. The people who keep them had a bit of extra explaining today. Unemployment is up, they said, but it's really down. Never fear, our explainer, business correspondent Paul Solman now explains.

JOANNE BURNS, Labor Data Collector: [at computer in her home] This is where I work.

MR. SOLMAN: For the first time in 27 years, the government has revamped its unemployment survey of households in a number of ways.

JOANNE BURNS: [at computer] Oh, my goodness. It's failed. Try it again.

MR. SOLMAN: JoAnne Burns' job is collecting the data. The first change is that this month she'll be doing it by computer.

JOANNE BURNS: I'll try it again.

MR. SOLMAN: Now, new technology can be frustrating, at least at first, but it should help come up with a more accurate unemployment number, according to the person responsible for interpreting the data, Jack Bregger.

JACK BREGGER, Bureau of Labor Statistics: It introduces precision. You have to ask the correct questions in the correct order with the computer, because you plug in an answer, then it automatically gives you the next one. As a result, we were able to put together a much more accurate and comprehensive questionnaire.

MR. SOLMAN: The so-called household survey of unemployment began in 1940 and has been done pretty much the same way for decades. The Census Bureau sent us footage to illustrate its basic approach, surveying households with a lengthy written form. It now does 60,000 a month. Confidentiality is guaranteed, so this, in case you're wondering, is a reenactment. [Reenactment of people completing survey] Over the years the Bureau has incorporated computers into its tallying system -- the old punch cards are being processed here -- but starting January, the interviewing is done on computer just like in this PR tape.

[PR TAPE SEGMENT]

MR. SOLMAN: This is a somewhat clandestine operation. Confidentiality means that we can't watch the actual interviews, but our surveyor, Joanne Burns, agreed to take us around her survey area, Newark, New Jersey, to see how the nation's monthly unemployment data get collected.

JOANNE BURNS: [outside] Oh, very nice. [laughing as snow falls on her hair]

MR. SOLMAN: There are plenty of surprises on this job, and weather is usually the least of them. In surveying Newark neighborhoods for six years, Burns has faced police interrogation, physical threats, had doors slammed in her face, but Burns has some surprises of her own.

JOANNE BURNS: Sometimes when you have a difficult person who, you know, turns you away the first time or so, get 'em a card. When you go back the next time and you say, oh, did you get my card, oh, is that you? I say, yes, that was me. Oh, come in, beautiful card, you know, and you got them. You go in and do the interview.

MR. SOLMAN: Burns is one of 1800 government employees who have only one week a month to track down and survey some 35 households. For the sample to be statistically valid, every interview counts. But getting even one household can eat up an entire day for a variety of reasons.

JOANNE BURNS: Well, sometimes we have what is called a language barrier. You know, we cannot -- we cannot speak their language, and they cannot speak our language.

MR. SOLMAN: When Burns used to survey in this Polish and now also Portuguese neighborhood, the locals had trouble with English and anyone asking questions in it. Burns had to reassure interviewees.

JOANNE BURNS: That we weren't really trying to invade their privacy or anything, or we weren't from the KGB or whatever, you know, because you find out a lot of Polish people were very, you know, they were very leery of government.

MR. SOLMAN: She turned to the priest at St. Casimir's for help. But today the parish house is snowed under.

MR. SOLMAN: So what do you do in a situation like this? Say you were actually going to try to find him.

JOANNE BURNS: Okay. We would go around to the front and see if there's someone around there, or we would ask around in the neighborhood to see if maybe the priest was away or something, and if there isn't anyone here, we know what evenings their services are.

MR. SOLMAN: Do you have to sit through a whole --

JOANNE BURNS: Well -- well, what you would do is you would time it toward the end of the service.

MR. SOLMAN: But no services today.

MR. SOLMAN: It's all locked? LADY ON STREET: You'd have to go the priest today, the office. That's the only way you'll get in.

MR. SOLMAN: So if Burns were actually on the job today, she'd cross the street for a visit to the Polish hair salon.

JOANNE BURNS: [at Polish hair salon] I'm Joanne Burns. I'm with the United States Census Bureau, and we just need a little information about the church. And what is the Father's name there?

WOMAN: Our father's name?

JOANNE BURNS: Uh huh.

WOMAN: Father Marchinec.

JOANNE BURNS: Martinez?

WOMAN: No, Marchinec.

JOANNE BURNS: Father Martinec.

WOMAN: Not Martinec, Marchinec.

JOANNE BURNS: Marchinec?

WOMAN: Yes. Father Felix, we always just call him Father Felix.

JOANNE BURNS: Father Felix, okay, very good.

SALON OPERATOR: Do you want the phone number to call the office?

JOANNE BURNS: That would be good. That would be good, if I might have that number.

SALON OPERATOR: Okay.

MR. SOLMAN: Now, this wasn't just for the camera. Burns will pass on the phone number to the person who currently surveys this neighborhood. Efforts like these and the work of some 350 phone interviewers result in a response rate of about 95 percent. The responses become the unemployment number reported the first Friday of every month.

PHONE INTERVIEWER: How many hours a week does she usually work at her job?

MR. SOLMAN: Now, even when the delivery is a little more authentic, the survey is only as good as the questions being asked. In January, interviewers were armed with new questions as well as the new computers. Here are the results from the old survey in December. Of all Americans, 16 and over, 128.9 million were categorized as in the labor force, i.e., either working or actively looking for work. Of those, 120.7 million were employed, 8.2 million unemployed, which means not working but trying to find a job. That's an unemployment rate of 6.4 percent. But as Burns and others were out braving ice, earthquakes, and the like the third week of last month, Jack Bregger was already anticipating a seemingly dramatic result, a higher unemployment number due solely to the new survey changes.

JACK BREGGER: It would appear that, on average, the unemployment rate will be about 1/2 a percentage point higher, so, in other words, the December figure of 6.4 percent, all other things being equal, it will be around 6.9 percent.

MR. SOLMAN: That's largely because of the change in the questions. The old survey began: What were you doing most of last week? Working, keeping house, going to school, or something else. It didn't exactly focus the mind on the issue of work.

JACK BREGGER: After all, people spend more time sleeping in a week than do anything else in the first place, and so I, we didn't think that the initial question was giving the notion is this is a survey about labor force activity.

MR. SOLMAN: The new survey, however, begins: Last week, did you do any work for pay? It then continues with some new questions emphasizing work such as: Do you currently want a job either full- or part-time?

JACK BREGGER: The result is we are finding more people who are looking for work, particularly those groups that might be looking for part-time jobs, and this includes women, it includes older persons, and it includes teenagers.

MR. SOLMAN: Now, back in December, another 65 1/2 million Americans were categorized as not in the labor force, i.e., not looking for work at all. But as of January, some of those folks are now being recategorized as looking for work and, therefore, officially unemployed. Thus, the not in the labor force number goes down, the number of unemployed goes up, and the official unemployment rate this month is higher than it would have been using the old survey. Joanne Burns expected to find some of the recategorized unemployed in buildings like this one where she's interviewed in the past.

JOANNE BURNS: Okay. This is an apartment with no doorbells on the outside.

MR. SOLMAN: No doorbells but important data, people who when asked directly may now say they're looking for part-time work. But, again, if you can't get in the door, you can't ask the question.

JOANNE BURNS: I'm locked out.

MR. SOLMAN: You're locked out?

JOANNE BURNS: Um hmm.

MR. SOLMAN: There are how many apartments here?

JOANNE BURNS: I would say approximately 30 or so.

MR. SOLMAN: You have to go inside?

JOANNE BURNS: Mm hmm.

MR. SOLMAN: So what do you do?

JOANNE BURNS: I'll come and I'll sit and I'll wait until someone either comes out of the building or goes into the building.

MR. SOLMAN: Sit, you mean on the --

JOANNE BURNS: No. I'll sit on my car.

MR. SOLMAN: You'll sit on your car?

JOANNE BURNS: Yeah. I'll sit on the hood of the car, and I'll wait there. And when I see someone coming up the sidewalk, then I'll follow them up, and I'll get access to the building, or I'll wait until the mailman comes, and I come in with the mailman.

MR. SOLMAN: Equipped with the new survey, data collectors were putting the more direct questions to occupants of buildings like this across the country. If the occupants were looking for part- time work, they'll now show up in the unemployment numbers. We continued our tour of Newark, talking about other, less significant changes in the survey, other problems in getting it done, but the main unemployment news this month is that the official unemployment rate went up a hefty .3 percent in January for, as we've seen, purely technical reasons. Meanwhile, however, statistics aside, Joanne Burns is sensing an upswing in employment.

JOANNE BURNS: Well, I see it from the people that I interview, that things are getting better. More people seem to be working. More people seem to be working more hours than they were in the past few years. I can also see it in my own household with my husband. He works at Ford Motors. A couple of years ago and even up until last year, they were off a lot. They had a lot of down time, but now they're working 10 hours a day, sometimes six days a week.

MR. SOLMAN: In fact, especially for people with jobs, the situation is getting better. There are, however, more than 15 million Americans who are still either unemployed or part-time but looking for full-time, or who've given up looking for work altogether. Those people, of course, do show up in Joanne Burns' data, but one final sobering fact never makes it into the unemployment number at all, that there are now fewer job openings out there for each person looking than at any time in recent years. FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

MR. LEHRER: Now, how the politics of the economy, health care reform and other matters of the week, look to Mark Shields and Paul Gigot. Mark is a syndicated columnist and our regular analyst. Paul writes a column for the Wall Street Journal. On the economy, the unemployment figures today, Mark, but also the news that the Federal Reserve had raised short-term interest rates, is that good news?

MR. SHIELDS: No, it's not good news politically for the Clinton administration, Jim. The administration came to power promising change, promising new activity and energy in providing jobs to the country. That was one of the reasons George Bush lost his job was that Americans were concerned about jobs. They were deprived -- the Democrats -- or at least felt they were -- of the stimulus package, a major jobs program. They didn't -- they couldn't do a tax cut. That had been done over and over again by their predecessors. They couldn't go into deficit spending, because the deficit was the big issue. So lowering interest rates and lowered interest rates were the one hold card the Democrats had and played it to a fare-thee- well, and finally over an extended period, economic stimulus seemed to follow, that housing starts were up, housing sales, auto --

MR. LEHRER: Auto sales.

MR. SHIELDS: All the rest.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah.

MR. SHIELDS: And now you take that out and the interest rate starts to climb again and --

MR. LEHRER: And is that's what's going to happen?

MR. SHIELDS: Not many hours left in the clear.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. Paul.

MR. GIGOT: Well, let's not get too carried away. So it's still only a quarter point.

MR. SHIELDS: Okay.

MR. GIGOT: I mean, it's -- these are awfully low interest rates, and I think it could potentially --

MR. LEHRER: From three to three and a quarter is what we're talking about --

MR. GIGOT: That's right.

MR. LEHRER: -- in just one raise.

MR. GIGOT: And it's the first rate increase in five years.

MR. SHIELDS: Yes, it is.

MR. GIGOT: And what I think is on the mind of the Fed, and I think the President actually kind of signaled this earlier this week, was that we're not going to repeat the '70s. We're not going to let inflation get carried away. And this is a kind of an inoculation, a way of saying to investors, look, we raised rates a little bit now, we're in control, we're not going to let it race the economy, race out of control, and in the long-term, '94, '95, '96, when this President will be running for reelection, then we won't have 7 or 8 or 9 percent interest rates.

MR. SHIELDS: The only people I talked to today were people who were going to be up in 1994. 1996 might as well be 2050 for them. They're looking at November.

MR. GIGOT: It's going to be a good economy.

MR. SHIELDS: Well, that's --

MR. LEHRER: We ran in the News Summary a while ago the Sec. of the TreasuryBentsen looking, trying to put the best possible face on it --

MR. SHIELDS: Yes.

MR. LEHRER: -- with a very down face.

MR. SHIELDS: That's right.

MR. LEHRER: And is this strictly politics, that this is not what, you know -- he emphasized independence, and that's correct, is he not, Paul? I mean --

MR. GIGOT: I think that's very sound, because the worst thing people out there need is, is to have the politicians dictating the Federal Reserve, because that says, oh, oh, they're going to gun the money supply, we're back to inflation. Remember what did in the last Democratic President in the 1970s? It was inflation. That was the great thing that defeated Jimmy Carter. And I can tell you, that is on the mind of Lloyd Bentsen, and it's on the mind of Bill Clinton.

MR. SHIELDS: But don't forget, what fueled that inflation in large part was OPEC and an overnight quadrupling of the world oil prices! I mean, that certainly didn't -- it didn't dampen the inflationary fires in, in the 1970s. I -- I think -- I don't know a Democrat from shoe leather who would have been happier if the Fed had done nothing today and just gone home for the weekend, rather than raising it to 3 1/4.

MR. LEHRER: Well, we'll see what happens on that. Look, the, the criticism, I guess, or the action of the two big business groups, the Business Roundtable and the Chamber of Commerce in coming down on the opposite side of the Clinton health care form, is, is that a big setback, Paul, for the President and Mrs. Clinton?

MR. GIGOT: I think it is a setback, and I'll tell you why. The - - this President needs some business support for health care. He needs it for a couple of reasons. One, he needs it because a lot of centrists, some urban Democrats, aren't going to vote for this plan if it doesn't have some business people supporting it. The other thing is there's something in it called an employer mandate which is really requiring businesses to pay for it. So business is going to be the financier, in essence, for a lot of those, because otherwise you have to raise taxes. Somebody has to pay for expanded coverage. Business basically was invited to pay. It just declined the invitation. And that's going to be a problem for this President, because it means the employer mandate part of this bill, which is really at the center of the Clinton plan, may be dead.

MR. SHIELDS: It was a -- it was a tough blow for the White House. Most people in America don't know what a Business Roundtable is - - they think it's a furniture sale -- but because the White House - -

MR. LEHRER: Let's tell everybody what it is. It's the heads of 200 large corporations in America, right.

MR. SHIELDS: And what happened was that the, the Business Roundtable a month ago had voted some 45 to 14 in favor of the Cooper Plan, which is the plan sponsored and supported by Jim Cooper which is watered-down, without the employer mandates and without absolute universal coverage. It has both -- it's the only plan that has both Democrats and Republican sponsorship in the Congress. And the White House went to work to try and turn it around. And they thought they could. And they were wrong. They were unable to do it, and as a result, it elevated the fight to the point where it was on the front pages of an awful lot of newspapers. What would have been buried back in the truss ads somewhere with the "I will not be responsible" notices all of a sudden became front-page news, and we're discussing it tonight. So I think it did hurt, and I think it probably emboldened the Chamber of Commerce's more, more conservative membership, because --

MR. LEHRER: They didn't endorse Cooper. They just said, we don't like the Clinton Plan.

MR. SHIELDS: Last fall, last fall, the same people in October had said, yes, we believe that the employers must provide and pay for part of the insurance. And the original testimony going in yesterday on the Chamber of Commerce's part was we're going to pay up to 50 percent; we want to cut from 80 down to 50 percent of the part the employer -- and that was changed in a space of four hours.

MR. LEHRER: But, Paul, if I read what you're saying, is the administration really didn't have a lot of choice, they had to go after business support if they're going to make this thing work?

MR. GIGOT: Well, I think that they had to have some business support, and, in fact, the bill was designed, the Clinton plan is designed with certain goodies like paying for early retirees, for big businesses, to lure them in. They thought they had some support, and I think the mistake was what Mark says, going so public with it and making all of these phone calls so that, you know, you're not supposed to ask a question that you don't know the answer to, and you're not supposed to pick a fight you can't win in this public. And, and they made it a much bigger thing than they could, and they might have been able to keep it quiet and work on the Chamber of Commerce on the side or something like that, but they're pursuing a very confrontational strategy, and it seems to me it backfired on them.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah.

MR. SHIELDS: Just to add to it, they do have business support, I mean, the Big Three, the automakers, McDonnell-Douglas testified -- that's right -- but there are major American -- the higher, the more industrial high wage, high benefit employers who are -- for whom the cost of health insurance has become a competitive disability or liability for them, they are in many cases supporting the President or at least a national health plan. So the problem is that the Business Conference -- the Business Roundtable wasn't available to them.

MR. LEHRER: Just in terms of politics and moving this thing along, what do you all think of the, the aggressive reaction from Mrs. Clinton today up in Philadelphia? I read in the News Summary. She said that business people want status quo, et cetera. They want to continue to -- this system that costs to much and all of that, and Sen. Rockefeller really took -- particularly named the head of the Business Roundtable and said there was a place in hell for him coming or something like that. Is that -- is that good politics, to make big business the, the villain in this?

MR. GIGOT: Well, I'm a Catholic, so I know there's a lot of ways to damnation, but I didn't think disagreeing with Jay Rockefeller was necessarily one of them. He, he -- I think it's bad politics. I mean, any time -- it may be good politics on a tax bill or something smaller -- but any time you're dealing with one-seventh of the U.S. economy, something that affects people's lives so intimately, you really need consensus in the country. And I don't think you can build that sort of consensus in Congress. You certainly can't get Republican votes or a lot of interest group help if you're beating them over the head all the time, if you pick fights with the drug companies, with the insurance companies, with various interest groups. I think this is hurting their strategy. They've got to move back to a more consensus-building approach.

MR. LEHRER: What do you think?

MR. SHIELDS: Well, I think there are two factors that really hurt the Clinton plan this week. The first was the President in his State of the Union Address last week, the great symbol and signal he sent about, held up this pen, and I will veto any bill, that was intended, Jim, to reassure people who had walked the plank last year on the BTU tax which was then dropped when it went to the Senate after the House Democrats had voted for it, that there would be no backing down this time. And what happened this week was we got into sort of an open discussion very early and very specific on compromise that was going to be made. I think that there's no question that the Clinton initial proposal is in serious, deep trouble. I think that the White House would be wise and well- advised to announce that this was not intended as the final finished product, this was a starting point for debate. The President has certain principles he wants to lay down, obviously universal coverage being the most dominant and the most preeminent, because that's one in which there is a national consensus. I mean, right now, we provide, we provide universal treatment in this country. Everybody gets treatment. We don't have universal coverage. All right. Somebody's going to pay for it. All of us are going to pay -- the people who have insurance -- the hospitals -- it's going to be picked up.

MR. LEHRER: It's being done now.

MR. SHIELDS: That's exactly right.

MR. GIGOT: Everybody gets health care somehow in this country.

MR. SHIELDS: That's right. And I think that's the case the President -- that's the strongest case -- but I think he has to really back off of the specifics of the initial plan. That might be a difficult thing to do.

MR. LEHRER: What about making business the villain, is there mileage down that road?

MR. SHIELDS: I think that not on the Business Roundtable vote. I think, you know, not on whether they voted for Cooper rather than Clinton, because there isn't a sense of the bogeyman. If there were a specific issue at some point where the insurance companies who are not popular, and if you want to pick a villain on the other side, but I don't think the issue is defined or drawn enough where you could say because this fellow did x, that that makes him a moral leper.

MR. LEHRER: Do you agree it's just too early for that even if it might work?

MR. GIGOT: Well, I mean, certainly you look at the polls, insurance companies aren't popular, but I think it's way too early, you've got to build some support behind this, and business has to be part of that.

MR. LEHRER: And they could very easily, instead of taking 'em on, just said, well, obviously, we haven't explained our plan as well as we should have, and they misunderstand it and go on.

MR. SHIELDS: That's right.

MR. GIGOT: The problem here is now they've got some ballots behind the Cooper Bill in the House, and it's emerging as a second alternative.

MR. LEHRER: Well, if they'd only listen to us, they wouldn't have these problems, right? Thank you all very much. ESSAY - GAG ORDER?

MS. WARNER: We close tonight with some thoughts about freedom and equality in today's world. They come from Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page.

CLARENCE PAGE, Chicago Tribune: As children, we sang, "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me." Oh, yeah, says who? A new wave of legal scholars has other ideas. They express them in books like this, Words That Wound, powerful, persuasive essays by leading law professors who say groups of people can be assaulted, hurt by words when those words happen to be racist words or sexist words. They agree largely with the thinking of Catharine MacKinnon, a pioneer in sexual harassment law, who argues in her new book, Only Words, that pornography is rape, even the tame stuff like "Playboy" is rape, she says, not a figurative representation of rape, but the thing itself, a felonious violation of women's rights, and women, themselves.

SPEAKER: We are the people of America that's fighting Communism.

CLARENCE PAGE: Same thing for racist expression, like a cross burning, this too can cause permanent emotional damage to people, says MacKinnon, and is, therefore, also in itself an act of assault. Words, in MacKinnon's view, do not lead to action; they are action. And the First Amendment? Well, the new thinkers disparage that document as the creation of dead white males, dead white slave holding males, whose motives are accordingly suspect. There's nothing new about efforts to put a harness on the First Amendment, but the old argument seems to have a new twist today. The victorian prude wears feminist garb. The campus activist who in the '60s tried to resist power today tries to enlist power, to suppress someone else's free speech all in the name of equality. Many of our college campuses, once bastions of free speech, now have speech codes to prescribe what can be said or not said, who can be offended freely, and who must be protected from offense. In the past year alone, campus newspapers have been confiscated and trashed at more than two dozen campuses in protest over offenses, real or perceived, to blacks, feminists, Asians, or some other campus minorities, all in the interest of equality. The University of Pennsylvania has dropped their controversial speech policy that was invoked against a white male student who called a group of black female students "water buffalo." Opponents said the policy limited free speech. Many students thought it didn't go far enough.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Hallelujah! Hallelujah! All right, God bless you!

CLARENCE PAGE: Activists used to view the principles of free speech and equal rights as partners. Free speech enabled civil rights leaders and women's rights leaders and gay rights leaders and all other rights leaders to speak their mind, no matter who they offended. The public could figure out for itself who was right. But if today's progressive legal scholars find freedom and equality to be in conflict, where will it end? What happens when every offense becomes a punishable hate crime? Will our language begin to change under penalty of law? Will those of us who used to be called "colored people" now be called "people of color?" Will white people then become "people of no color," or perhaps "melanin impoverished?" Will feminist girls insist on being called "pre- women?" Will Roseanne Arnold want to be called "a person of size?" Will animal rights activists be upset if our house pets don't become "nonhuman animal companions?" Will flowers become "botanical companions?" Will the bald insist on being "hair disadvantaged?" Will the old become the "chronically gifted," and the dead be called more politely "terminally inconvenienced?" Some people will tell you the Los Angeles riot was not a riot but an "uprising" or a "rebellion." But did you know those looters were really "nontraditional shoppers," and that those who were caught and convicted are not convicts but "clients of the correctional system?"

ACTOR IN FILM SEGMENT: Take him instead of me. He's the thought criminal. It's him you want.

CLARENCE PAGE: George Orwell imagined a grim day in 1984 when politics would replace candid language with "Newspeak" and a new equality would be created in which some people would be more equal than others. When 1984 came and went, some people laughed and said Orwell was wrong. Maybe he was. Or maybe he was just off by a few years. I'm Clarence Page. RECAP

MS. WARNER: Again, the major stories of this Friday, for the first time in five years the Federal Reserved moved to increase a key short-term interest rate. The news sent the Dow Jones Average down nearly 100 points. The nation's unemployment rolls fell to 6.7 percent of the work force in January, and the Clinton administration proposed using federal agencies, including the Secret Service, to fight crime in public housing projects. Good night, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Good night, Margaret. We'll see you on Monday night. Have a nice weekend. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.