The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. Leading the news this Monday, the FBI uncovered a plot by Colombian drug suspects to buy anti- aircraft missiles and Soviet tanks rolled through the breakaway republic of Latvia in an apparent show of force. We'll have details in our News Summary in a moment. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: After the News Summary, we look the road toward independence for the Soviet republic of Latvia [FOCUS - BREAK WITH MOSCOW]. Then journalist Allister Sparks [FOCUS - ROAD TO CHANGE] analyzes the DeKlerk-Mandela progress toward a solution in South Africa, we have a report on school desegregation in Seattle, Washington [FOCUS - BUSING BUST?], and we close with a Joanna Simon profile of a man of pictures [FINALLY - PICTURE THIS]. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: The FBI said today it had broken up an alleged plot by Colombian drug dealers to use stinger missiles against the Colombian government. Over the weekend, agents in Florida arrested two Colombian men who tried to buy the U.S. made anti-aircraft missiles from undercover agents. ABC News reported that drug dealers were planning to assassinate Colombian Pres. Virgilio Barco. The FBI said it was unaware of specific targets but the missiles were to be used by the Medellin drug cartel. The alleged plot was discovered during an undercover drug investigation in Western Florida. The agent in charge of the Tempe bureau spoke at a news conference this morning.

ALLEN McCREIGHT, FBI Agent: Stinger missiles were to be transported to Colombia and used against Colombian government aircraft. It is further alleged in the complaint that on May 1, 1990, at a meeting with Polk County sheriffs and FBI undercover agents in Lakeman, Florida, Ramos Tanoco and Arsela Geraldo were shown a stinger missile and they agreed to complete the deal, which called for a first payment in excess of $1 million.

MR. MacNeil: In Colombia, the army spent the weekend raiding drug labs in the jungle. Soldiers seized more than 13 tons of cocaine, making it the country's biggest drug seizure ever. Officials said much of the cocaine was awaiting shipment to the U.S. The soldiers also destroyed many air strips to transport the drugs. The army said two people were killed and fifteen arrested in the raids. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Soviet tanks rolled through the capital of Latvia today, but Soviet officials said they were there for an upcoming World War II victory parade. Latvia declared itself independent of the Soviet Union on Friday. It did not go as far as its neighbor, Lithuania, electing to stay with the Soviet constitution at least for now. Latvia's parliament chose a new prime minister today. He is a pro-independence economist named Ivars Gadmanas. Soviet Pres. Gorbachev today asked Latvia for an explanation of its independence decision. The Latvian parliament replied with a promise to respect Soviet interests and a call for negotiations. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary.

MR. MacNeil: Back in this country, Pres. Bush and congressional leaders have agreed to put all budget related issues on the table. White House Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said today there will be no preconditions when the two sides sit down together later this week. He said everything, including the President's, "Read my lips, no new tax" pledge, will be up for negotiation. The goal will be to reduce the deficit by at least $37 billion. In other economic news, the Labor Department said U.S. productivity fell in the first quarter of the year by an annual rate of 1 percent. The statistic measures the output per hour for non-farm workers.

MR. LEHRER: Management today declared the Greyhound Bus strike over. The drivers union said it wasn't so. Talks between the two sides collapsed Saturday after the company offered a four year wage freeze and the elimination of 4500 union jobs. The union called that an insult. Greyhound Chairman Fred Currey said today in Dallas the company would now operate with non-union replacements as if there were no strike.

FRED CURREY, Greyhound: This national institution is being revived and this national institution will be alive and well for the summer of 1990, taking care of its patrons, whether they're in Billings, Montana, or Corsiarkana, Texas, or New York City or Sacramento, California. All of those are points we serve plus thousands and thousands of others points, so Greyhound is back.

MR. LEHRER: The union disagreed. A spokesman said the strike had been effective and would continue. He said the company was in financial trouble and the union hoped that would bring them back to the bargaining table.

MR. MacNeil: The flooding in Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma continued today. The Red Cross said 723 homes in Texas were destroyed. More than 2,000 others were damaged in the past 2 weeks. It's the state's worst flooding since 1908. In Arkansas, the Arkansas River reached record levels in Pine Bluff. Near Little Rock, it's expected to crest tomorrow at five feet above flood stage. Emergency crews have been sand bagging for days in preparation for the rising water.

MR. LEHRER: Pope John Paul II met with Mexico's Pres. Salinas today. They discussed the future of relations between Mexico and the Vatican. Diplomatic ties were broken off more than 60 years ago over Mexico's then tough anti-church laws. After their meeting, the Pope visited one of Mexico's poorest cities known as Charco near Mexico City. Two hundred thousand people turned out.

MR. MacNeil: The White House today rejected a plea from former hostage Frank Freed that the U.S. negotiate for the release of Americans still held. Yesterday Reed told a news conference that he was brutally beaten by his captors during his 44 months in captivity. He called on all governments to negotiate for the release of hostages even if you have to get in bed with the devil. White House Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater reiterated administration policy that to negotiate with terrorists would encourage them to take more Americans hostage.

MR. LEHRER: And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to Latvia's move towards independence, the Mandela-DeKlerk talks in South Africa, school desegregation in Seattle, and the profile of a man of pictures. FOCUS - BREAK WITH MOSCOW

MR. LEHRER: First it was Lithuania, now comes Latvia. A second Baltic Republic wants independence back from the Soviet Union. The Latvia move is our lead story tonight. Its newly elected Parliament voted for independence on Friday but unlike Lithuania it did not suspend the Soviet Constitution or take any other overt steps toward separating itself from Moscow. Latvia has a population of 2.6 million people. Nearly half of them Russians or other non Baltic Ethnics. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were annexed by the Soviets in 1940. Estonia has not yet voted for independence. We get three views now of where the Latvian movement toward independence may lead they are of Ojars Kalnins of the Latvian Association. The largest organization in this country of Latvian immigrants. Valery Tishkov Director of the Institute of Ethnography at the U.S.S. R. Academy of Sciences which studies nationality issues. he joins us from Calgary, Canada and Teresa Rokowska Harmstone a Soviet Nationality specialist who is a political science Professor in Canada now on leave at the U.S. Naval Academy. Mr. Tishkov do you believe that President Gorbachev is prepared to negotiate with the Latvians.

MR. TISHKOV: That is really a great challenge for the President because we never used in the past to have any kind of these procedures and it looks for Gorbachev as something very dangerous and something very psychologically difficult and it is also I think for the rest of the people, I mean, for many people especially of the Russian origin in the countries really a certain psychological barrier that they should over come. To sit at a table and start this dialogue and to accept the positions which was taken by leading political structures now in the Baltic regions.

MR. LEHRER: How do you read reactions thus far from Moscow as to whether or not Gorbachev and his fellow leaders are willing to sit down and work it out with Latvia?

MR. TISHKOV: Whether or not?

MR. LEHRER: Whether they are not willing to do so?

MR. TISHKOV: They will do it. That is the major problem. who must decide who has this right to declare secession. The basic position for Latvia and other Baltic Republics that 1940 was illegal, there are no referendums in 1940 about joining the Soviet Union so there is no kind of legal procedure should take place now like for example referendum. As it is set now by the new law accepted by the Supreme Soviet. So that is the position of one side which based more I would say on a historical basis. I mean the other side, the center, Gorbachev they insist in the position that this choice should be done now and there is also certain arguments in favor of this decision because 50 years have already past and the new generation has the right to make its own choice to secede or to stay in the Soviet Union and there is a new law now accepted by the Supreme Soviet which is rather democratic.

MR. LEHRER: Ms. harmstone what do you think? How do you read the reaction thus far as to whether or not Latvia's decision to go at it slightly different than the Lithuanians is going to make any difference?

MS. HARMSTONE: I don't think that it makes a difference to me in principal and it seems to me that the reaction was negative to begin with. On the other hand and I think as Professor Tishkov said the alternatives are getting fewer and fewer. In other words with in the context of overall ,democratization which has been announced pretty much the only alternative is to start negotiations. After the extreme pressure that has been applied to Lithuania so far and it begins to look like it is being applied to Latvia will only result in making the resistance or the stand of both Republics that much stronger. So I think pretty much at the end of the tunnel, I think, negotiations or the use of force which is not an alternative which could be lightly considered.

MR. LEHRER: Is it a fair statement

MS. Harmstone what President Gorbachev was trying to avoid was this very development. In other words if he played it tough in Lithuania he might cause the Latvians and the Estonians to be so aggressive but it did not work. Is that right?

MS. HARMSTONE: Psychologically it was the wrong move because it tended only to reinforce the Lithuanians and since basically I believe the Latvians and the Estonians feel exactly the same way. It has only prodded them I think to come and join the ranks because I think there is a perception that they really need to force the resolution.

MR. LEHRER: Do you agree Mr. Kalnins that the Latvians were put in a position where they really had to. This was not a big decision in a way. This is an inevitable decision?

MR. KALNINS: They have been preparing for this for quite some time. The Popular Front of Latvia announced its intention to establish or reestablish Latvia's independence well over a year ago and the people have been moving toward this direction. And the only thing that delayed the actual declaration was the existing election laws which did not allow the Supreme Soviet to meet until last week. I think that Mr. Gorbachev should have known that this was coming some time ago and as Professor Tishkov said he seemed to acknowledge that the illegal incorporation of the Baltic States 50 years ago is something illegal but the passage of 50 years does not make an illegal act correct and tolerable. And I think that it should be pointed out that the Latvian people as well as the Estonians and Lithuanians are not trying to secede from the Soviet Union. What they are trying to do is reestablish their legal independence which was taken from them.

MR. LEHRER: How would you draw the differences between the situation in Lithuania, what the Lithuanian Parliament did, the situation in Latvia and what the Latvian Parliament did?

MR. KALNINS: If you look at the declarations closely they really don't differ that much. In both cases they recognize that their countries were illegally annexed to the Soviet Union in 1940. They reestablished the existing constitutions that were in effect at the time and then suspended them for the time being until they can go through this transition period to establish defacto independence. The biggest difference that I see so far is that in the Latvian case they chose a compromise candidate for the Presidency of the Supreme Soviet.

MR. LEHRER: Less confrontational the man they chose?

MR. KALNINS: Yes Mr. Garbonos is perhaps the most acceptable to the non Latvian population in Latvia. He has good relations with Moscow and I see him as a pragmatic choice for this interim period and I think that it was an act of goodwill on the part of the Latvians toward Moscow to show that they are willing to enter in to good faith negotiations.

MR. LEHRER: So Ms. Harmstone you would agree that the Latvians got some message from the Lithuanian situation. At least they tried to avoid some of the confrontations. Correct?

MS. HARMSTONE: Yes I think they tried the alternative which was made clear to them from Moscow. Mr. Gorbachev has repeated several times if they only followed the constitutional road there will be negotiations. So now i think this is the way to test this particular approach and I think so far it has not worked it seems.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Tishkov. The way you read this is that Mr. Gorbachev would not see these situations that differently. Is that correct? I mean Lithuania is Latvia as far as the process is concerned. I mean what they have done. What they did on Friday.

MR. TISHKOV: The question about the differences between Lithuania and Latvia. There are two basic differences. One I would say again more historical but which gave more force and strength to the Lithuanian position the existence in the past of a very strong and independent Lithuanian State. The history of the Lithuanian Statehood is the longer so it is stronger in the memory and mentality of the people. Another factor which gives difference to the situation is that as the composition of population. In Lithuania 80 percent of the population or more is Lithuania. So a qualified majority is guaranteed to this Republic even if they will follow the new law of referendum. But in Latvia there are only 53 percent of Latvians so to get the qualified majority and support for the decision in favor of independence that is already a question to get support from non Latvian people and there is some data which was published here that 45 percent of non Latvian people in Latvia in support of that decision. I don't know what kind of data but it is a very important sign. So I don't speak of the situation on top the choice of a political leader the negotiations but there are different factors between two Republics. We must read and take in consideration the regional situation in the two Republics.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Kalnins what is you reading how Latvia is prepared to cope with the situation. In other words Gorbachev does to Latvia what he did to Lithuania which is the economic blockade. Curtailed natural gas and other supplies. Can Latvia cope with that?

MR. KALNINS: They have been preparing for it for over a month now because they watched what happened in Lithuania. They are anticipating it but at the same time they feel that Moscow will be less willing to use the same kind of pressure on Latvia for several reasons. One Moscow has a much larger industrial stake in Latvia. Latvia has a great number of factories under Soviet control and it a blockade were initiated it would shut down these factories and it would effect the Soviet economy.

MR. LEHRER: What kind of factories?

OJARS KALNINS, American-Latvian Association: There are a lot of electronics, there is a great deal of electronics equipment that is supplied to the Soviet Military. There is a major Port in Vensviles that supplies a large part of Soviet hard currency and if a blockade shut that Port down that would effect the Soviet economy. I think the other thing as Professor Tishkov mentioned is the large Russian population in Latvia. As Mr. Gorbachev has stated he wants to protect the interests of the Soviet people and an economic blockade against Latvia could also hurt the Russians and other non Latvians.

MR. LEHRER: How do you read that Ms. Harmstone, how the same tactics would work in Latvia?

MS. HARMSTONE: Well I don't think that even if they applied the blockade that it would have that much impact in Latvia. On the other hand I think that it is true that the rather large percentage of the non indigenous population that it is much more difficult to apply this kind of sanction because they may backfire. It has been stated the policy from Moscow is very much concerned with the protection of the immigrant Russian minorities and of course when one applies a blockade it goes across the board.

MR. LEHRER: Is there any question Ms. Harmstone that Estonia is going to do the same thing one of these days?

TERESA RAKOWSKA HARMSTONE, Soviet Affairs Analyst: I don't think there is any question. They are getting ready to do it too. Perhaps they will try to find another wrinkle sort of speak to try a slightly different approach.

MR. LEHRER: And you think Mr. Tishkov speaking of wrinkles that Mr. Gorbachev will try to find a wrinkle out of this or eventually he will take it up the wall and say okay you get your independence and back off. Do you have a prediction for us.

MR. TISHKOV: A prediction?

MR. LEHRER: Yes why not.

MR. TISHKOV: Well first I think that both sides. Gorbachev as President should display more patience. I can judge the situation in Canada where one of the provinces Quebec didn't sign the constitution for several years and nothing is going dangerous. In Great Britain, in Scotland they have their own currency. So there should not be any kind of panic and if the economy will act more and more independently over the political sphere political and cultural the situation which will be satisfactory for both sides.

MR. LEHRER: In other words if both sides will keep their powder dry you think the situation can eventually work itself out. Is that what you are suggesting?

VALERY TISHKOV, Institute of Ethnography, U.S.S.R.: I would prefer, personally I would prefer judging the situation here in the West when we can have, make certain analogies, so the best way is to prevent violence and the major merits, I would say a characteristic of the national movements in this region of the country comparing to the other regions was its peaceful character. We have only one victim. That's unfortunately a week ago which took place in Moscow when the Lithuanian man burn himself, but otherwise, hundreds of thousands, millions of people dissipated for the recent two, three, four years, and this movement, and it was deeply peaceful, so to keep this peaceful character may be the major obligation of both sides.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Mr. Tishkov, thank you very much. Ms. Harmstone, thank you. Mr. Kalnins, thank you.

MR. MacNeil: Still to come on the Newshour, the beginning of historic talks in South Africa, Seattle's struggle with busing and photographs as art. FOCUS - ROAD TO CHANGE

MR. MacNeil: We turn now to dramatic changes in another continent. Last week the leaders of the white Afrikaner government in South Africa and black men they only recently let out of jail started negotiations that could lead to the abolition of the 40 year old policy of apartheid. After three days of discussions described as talks about talks, South Africa's President F.W. DeKlerk and Nelson Mandela, a leader of the Black Nationalist Movement, held a joint news conference and assessed what had happened so far.

PRESIDENT F.W. DE KLERK, South Africa: The joint commitment to peaceful solutions which will lead to real negotiation, which can lead to real negotiation, is of extreme importance to all the people of South Africa. I look to the future with confidence and I appreciate the good spirit and the earnestness and the honesty which was a hallmark of the discussions.

NELSON MANDELA, African National Congress: We went into these discussions in dispute and that they should neither be victors nor losers, and at the end of those discussions, not only are we closer to one another, the ANC and the government, but we are all victors.

MR. MacNeil: We get our own assessment now from Allister Sparks, a fifth generation South African and a veteran journalist. Most recently he's covered South Africa for the Washington Post. He's in the U.S. now to publicize his new book, "The Mind of South Africa". He joins us from public television station KCTA in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Mr. Sparks, thanks for joining us.

ALLISTER SPARKS, Journalist: Good evening.

MR. MacNeil: Can you hear me all right?

MR. SPARKS: Yes, I can indeed.

MR. MacNeil: What do you think the talks last week achieved?

MR. SPARKS: I think first of all the fact that they happened is tremendously important, a milestone in itself. I think that perhaps the most important single achievement was confidence building between the groups. They got to know each other, they established a kind of relationship. This is particularly important between the two key figures, Pres. DeKlerk and Mr. Nelson Mandela. I think they also probably went a long way to clearing away the initial obstacles in the way of more substantive negotiations.

MR. MacNeil: Do you mean psychological obstacles or practical ones?

MR. SPARKS: No, these are practical obstacles. The African National Congress has been demanding an amnesty to allow for the complete release of all political prisoners. There's something like 550 people still in prison for politically related offenses. They want exiles to return. There are many thousands of exiles both belonging to the ANC and to other black political groups and, indeed, a number of white dissidents as well. For its part, the government is insisting on the ANC suspending its guerrilla struggle. I think that is the main factor, and it would also like to have the ANC call for a lifting of international sanctions. Those are the primary things. A working committee was set up which has until the 21st of May to reach agreement on those issues.

MR. MacNeil: That's a very short time, so that would indicate that they made progress on the substance of those issues?

MR. SPARKS: I would think so indeed. I think that's a very encouraging sign. In fact, they indicated as much at the press conference, that there was basic agreement, and what they have to do now is settle down to the nitty gritty, the nuts and bolts of putting together the right sort of amnesty legislation. And that's why I think there really is a very short time before they meet again.

MR. MacNeil: Does the atmosphere of the talks and the phrase that we've just heard DeKlerk giving the spirit in which Mandela conducted them, does it mean that DeKlerk has accepted Mandela and the ANC as the negotiators for the blacks?

MR. SPARKS: They will not be the only partners to the negotiation, but certainly the ANC is the primary movement and I think the government now recognizes that there will be other participants, but the core movement in the black community is the African National Congress and the key figure that I think the government is going to depend on very heavily indeed is Nelson Mandela.

MR. MacNeil: So in other words, this is something of a victory for Mandela and the ANC to have achieved that much recognition when DeKlerk has been saying all along that Chief Butalase and the Zulus and all other groups had to be part of the talks?

MR. SPARKS: Oh, indeed. Only three months ago they were an illegal organization. They were being demonized, portrayed as the devil incarnate, and now they are being acknowledged as the primary organization, and this leader, who was himself in prison for 28 years, more than a generation, is now being relied upon as the man that the government needs to carry through any agreement through the black community, to carry the black constituency with him.

MR. MacNeil: Suppose they overcome these necessary steps towards real negotiations, the amnesty you speak of and so on, suppose they agree on that. What shape do you think the real negotiations, what shape and form do you think they'll take?

MR. SPARKS: I think, in fact, what we saw last week will probably set the pattern of what's going to take place from here on. I personally don't expect any kind of large show piece, national convention of the kind that sorted out the Rhodesian settlement at Lancaster House. I don't think the government dare have a high profile show piece conference of that nature with many participants. The danger of such a thing collapsing would be too great and the consequences of a collapse too serious. So I think what we will have now are more working groups similar to the one that has just been set up and that issue by issue they will work their way through all of the basic differences. All of the key issues will be resolved in this way. I think it's going to be a long process. I would predict two to three years. And at the end of that, when they've worked through all of the crunch issues, then I would expect a meeting only at that point to really in effect collate and ratify what had already been agreed.

MR. MacNeil: Yesterday Mandela spoke at a rally at which a smaller crowd turned out than had for previous rallies, only 50,000, and he said, "People are going to read into this that the blacks are not fully behind the negotiations. They are," he said. What is the truth of that, in your view?

MR. SPARKS: There certainly are differences. There is an element, especially among the radical youth, that is opposed to negotiations, and the Pan Africanist Congress, a movement that broke away from the ANC in 1959, is poised on the left to pounce on and take advantage of any foot dragging or breakdown in the negotiations. These people, the radical movement, are taking the view that it is too early, that blacks are still too weak to be in an adequate bargaining position, and that any deal struck now will be to the disadvantage of blacks, will amount to a kind of sell out.

MR. MacNeil: They'd like to continue the war, the guerrilla war.

MR. SPARKS: They would like to continue the war. It's a phony position actually, because they do not have much in the way of a guerrilla army. It's the ANC that has the capability of fighting a war, so it is really a political position that is staked out but could give Mandela trouble. He's going to have some difficulty carrying the left wing with him.

MR. MacNeil: Speaking of trouble, on the white side, there are whites who hate DeKlerk for joining these talks. In fact, P.W. Botha, the former president, resigned from the nationalist party, national party in protest. Does DeKlerk have the political strength to carry this through over the months or years one presumes it'll take?

MR. SPARKS: He has a problem on his right, just as Mandela has a problem on his left, somewhat worse I would say, and there is no doubt that a large segment of his traditional supporters who have voted for the Afrikaner National Party over the years are bewildered, they're feeling insecure. They face a situation where for decades, many of them for their whole lives, the African National Congress has been demonized. It has been portrayed as the devil incarnate, a bunch of terrorist radicals, communists. As recently as the general election last September, even DeKlerk was campaigning on just such a platform. Then come February he legalized them and he is now himself doing what he criticized others for proposing to do. And this has created a sense of insecurity and there are a great many whites who are feeling very anxious about the future, and one of the worst features of this is that this dissenting element reaches deep into the security forces and particularly into the police force, so they have the capacity to disrupt things.

MR. MacNeil: To put it in a nutshell, do think Mandela on his side and DeKlerk on his, have the core support to carry this through?

MR. SPARKS: I think in the end, yes. I don't think it's going to be easy, but I do believe that they will carry it through. There may be breakdowns. There will be lots and lots of offstage noises. There will be setbacks, but I do predict in my book that the '90s, the present decade, will be the decade of transition. I made this prediction as I completed the book last October. I predicted then that negotiations would begin early in 1990, and I think it is predictable now that they will proceed. I think that there is no real fall back position for either side. They will be propelled and obliged really to move forward to a solution.

MR. MacNeil: I hate to cut you off, Allister Sparks, but that is the end of our time. Thank you very much for joining us.

MR. SPARKS: Thank you very much. FOCUS - BUSING BUST?

MR. LEHRER: Now a report about a vote to do away with a school desegregation plan in a city that has a voluntary school busing policy. The city is Seattle, Washington. The reporter is Lee Hochberg of public station KCTS-Seattle. [MOTHER TALKING TO CHILD]

MR. HOCHBERG: For five year old Jeffrey Erfle of school, busing means getting up around dawn for cartoons and Cocoa Crispies. [MOTHER TALKING TO CHILD]

MR. HOCHBERG: Not even old enough to dress himself, Jeffrey will board a bus in a few minutes for a 45 minute ride across town, a ride to a kindergarten, where he'll be only one of three white children out of twenty-one kids in the class, a ride through neighborhoods he probably can't recognize.

JILL ERFLE, Mother: He doesn't have any concept of actually where he is when he's on the bus, so he is kind of lost out there in Never Never Land and he doesn't know where he's at.

MR. HOCHBERG: Jeff Erfle is one of 20,000 children who are bused to desegregate Seattle's schools. 40 percent of the kids are white, 25 percent black, 25 percent Asian. Thousands of parents are fed up with the program.

MRS. ERFLE: He should not travel across town to go to school, when there are schools all around the area. There's 10 schools within 5 miles from here.

MR. HOCHBERG: When Seattle voluntarily began busing its children in 1978, the program was hailed as a national model. But 12 years later, Seattle voters apparently have run out of patience with it. In November, Seattle voters passed Ballot Initiative 34. It was an advisory measure calling on the school board to end forced busing for desegregation. Voters said that forcing their kids across town was unraveling neighborhoods and it wasn't improving education.

KATHY BAXTER, Busing Repeal Advocate: I think we've come to that realization in Seattle that force flat out doesn't work. The cost of force is much greater than any benefit.

MR. HOCHBERG: Kathy Baxter mapped out the citizen challenge to Seattle's busing program. A mother of two, she lives in Seattle's fashionable Laurelhurst neighborhood. Her fifth grade boy had attended the neighborhood school, but last year, the school district instituted a new assignment plan called "controlled choice". It gave many parents more options on where to bus their children, but it also made it possible that Baxter's son would be bused to a predominantly black school in a high crime neighborhood.

MS. BAXTER: I'm not interested in taking an experiment that might result in my child dying. We're lauding the freedom movement in Eastern Europe. At the same time we're saying, well, we're going to take away your personal rights, we're going to force you to do this, with your most precious commodity, your children.

MR. HOCHBERG: Baxter began galvanizing support for a ballot initiative to overthrow the busing program. Thousands of Seattle residents embraced the idea and the initiative passed by a slim 51 percent majority.

MARILYN SMITH: It barely passed. It was quite close so there was no overwhelming mandate.

MR. HOCHBERG: School board president Marilyn Smith though says ending busing would threaten the district's racial balance and perhaps cost the district state and federal fund, and it could threaten Seattle's generally positive racial environment.

MARILYN SMITH, Seattle School Board: Before we had our integration program there were some very real, very strong racial problems in our schools. If you went from one high school to another as a high school student, you might be afraid to enter that high school. There were fights after basketball games and football games. There was a lot of racial tension. Those tensions have decreased since Seattle first started integrating its schools.

MR. HOCHBERG: In January, a split board decided to ignore the initiative and retain busing. Now citizens are gathering in meetings like this to keep the pressure on the board. Blacks are alarmed by the district's latest study which shows black reading and math scores continue to be far below white scores. Busing was supposed to make sure minorities had equal access to learning tools and was supposed to narrow that achievement gap.

EARL DEBNAM, Father: Ten years ago they decided they were going to take our beautiful babies from us and put 'em out in outlyin' communities and ten years later we find out that their performance has not improved, but they're doin' worse.

DAINA BENNETT, Mother: We wanted to have control over our children's education. We want to have the final decision as to where our child will be educated.

MICHAEL PRESTON: What we're saying is that the forced busing has caused segregation, rather than desegregation.

MR. HOCHBERG: Michael Preston is one of the three board members who voted with the public to end mandatory busing. He says busing was also supposed to increase contact between white and minority children, but has succeeded only in driving white families out of the district.

MICHAEL PRESTON, Seattle School Board: It's not working. It's not working from an integration standpoint and it's not working educationally, and it's causing the deterioration of the Seattle public schools.

MR. HOCHBERG: There are 13,000 fewer white students in Seattle schools now than there were when busing started in 1978. Many white families have left for suburban or private schools. The city's minority population is only 24 percent, but minorities now make up more than half of the public school system's enrollment.

MR. PRESTON: If our trend continues, you, in effect, don't have a reasonable number of white students in the district so that your integration efforts become somewhat moot.

MR. HOCHBERG: District enrollment is down 2,000 students from last year. The state gives the district money on a per pupil basis, so that means Seattle schools are getting 6 million fewer dollars this year than last, money the district badly needs. But the board majority answers that like most urban school districts, Seattle's was losing students before busing ever began, so busing can't be blamed for all of the exodus.

MS. SMITH: I think there are people who have left, I know there are, because they do not want to deal with busing. There's no question about that. But there are other reasons that people are leaving that have nothing to do with that and so to look at those numbers say it's because of busing is I think extremely misleading.

DAVID BLOOM: Yeah, we've got problems, but don't look at busing as the culprit, the primary culprit.

MR. HOCHBERG: The people who fought for busing 13 years ago like David Bloom of the Church Council of Greater Seattle say Seattle voters would still support busing today if the school board hadn't clumsily implemented a new school assignment plan last year. It was called "Controlled Choice", but many parents consider it controlled chaos.

DAVID BLOOM, Church Council of Seattle: I think a number of people voted for 34 not so much because they necessarily were opposed to mandatory busing, but because they were mad at the school system for mucking up the implementation of controlled choice. [MEETING OVER "CONTROLLED CHOICE"]

MR. HOCHBERG: Under "Controlled Choice", Seattle families are given a list of traditional schools and special magnet programs to which they can bus their children. Parents choose preferences from the list. But they only get the school they want if their child's enrollment helps balance out the races at the school. The school district claims 88 percent of students got their first choice, but board member Amy Hagopian is aghast at the process. [MEETING OVER "CONTROLLED CHOICE" WITH BOARD MEMBER]

AMY HAGOPIAN, Seattle School Board: Oh, this is a hopeless plan. I mean, these people are trying to administer a totally hopeless student assignment plan. It is way too complicated to explain to the board, let alone parents.

MR. HOCHBERG: The complex system leads to stories like that of nine year old Shalone Allen. Shalone and her mother, Carol, moved to Seattle and settled in the Laurelhurst neighborhood. A black living in a predominantly white neighborhood, Carol assumed her daughter would be assigned to the neighborhood school. Instead, she was assigned to a majority black school several miles and a half hour bus ride away.

CAROL ALLEN, Mother: They're telling everyone that this is their objective, to integrate the schools, and here they have a black child that's going to be bused out of a white neighborhood. [CLASSROOM SITUATION]

MR. HOCHBERG: Frustrated, Carol pulled Shalone out of the Seattle school system and enrolled her in the only private school she could afford, Zion Preparatory Academy, an all black school. So you integrated a neighborhood?

MS. ALLEN: Yes. And now Shalone is attending an all black school which defeated my whole purpose. In physical education at Zion they're teachingher Double Dutch, which is predominantly black jump rope sport, and she's bein' teased because she doesn't know how to Double Dutch. I've prepared her from Day One to deal with integration, not just blacks.

MR. HOCHBERG: Seattle's new mayor ran for office on a pledge to fight the anti-busing movement, calling it a terrible new ingredient in Seattle's social stew, but even he is now responding to the political winds in Seattle. He suggests the time has come for the city to try something besides busing.

MAYOR NORM RICE, Seattle: I think that we can eliminate mandatory busing. I would like to give some empowerment and some sense of certainty to parents as they move through and ending mandatory assignments is a good way to bring that back.

MR. HOCHBERG: Mayor Norm Rice says if Seattle's inner-city schools aggressively seek state and federal funds for more attractive magnet programs, white parents will voluntarily bus their to those schools. But church leaders remind Rice that Seattle already has magnet schools and on their own, they haven't desegregated the district. They say there may be no politically easy solution if he wants racial balance in Seattle schools.

MR. BLOOM: We have not found, nor do I believe any other city has found any way to achieve a truly desegregated school system without having some component that includes mandatory busing. Because our ideals may not have been realized to date doesn't mean that we should abandon the vision that we have for the kind of community that we want to create.

MR. HOCHBERG: Especially, Bloom says, when kids like Jeff Erfle are just now starting to share in that vision. [CLASSROOM SITUATION]

MR. HOCHBERG: Jeffrey's school is closing this year and students will be moved to a new building farther away. His parents say they'll pull Jeff out of the district before allowing him to be bused that far. With the school board committed to racial balance, the next years promise to add up to more turmoil for the children in Seattle schools. FINALLY - PICTURE THIS

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight we meet a man who has influenced the way we look at the world and ourselves through photographs. Arts Correspondent Joanna Simon has our report.

MS. SIMON: You might say this exhibit was 150 years in the making. It's the Museum of Modern Art's new show summing up the entire history of photography. Classic pictures from the 19th century share wall space with improvisations from the 20th. Mysterious landscapes give way to the latest trends from the art world. In another sense, this show was three decades in the making. It's a kind of summation of one man's view of photography. That man is John Szarkowski. For 28 years as head of the museum's department of photography he has been changing our minds about the way we see pictures. Walk through a gallery with him and even a humble catalogue photo of two plows takes on a strange new beauty.

MR. SZARKOWSKI: I don't suggest that the man who made this went around telling people he was an artist, but when he made this picture he knew it was beautiful. You couldn't make it so well if you didn't realize that it was beautiful, that way just like that, the description of the surfaces, you know, that wonderful sculptural quality. Look at the way, the sharpness and the cleanliness of that form, perfect.

MS. SIMON: Szarkowski has been thinking about pictures this way for many years. Back in the '50s he authored several books of photographs and was considered something of a thinking man's photographer. That may be why the museum hired him to replacethe legendary photographer Edward Steiken as head of their department of photography. The museum had already been collecting and showing photographs for decades, so Szarkowski didn't need to prove that photography was an art. He had other priorities. Perhaps they went back to his first session with a camera as a boy.

JOHN SZARKOWSKI, Museum of Modern Art: It was spring and there was a robin in the drain trough outside my bedroom window making a nest preparatory to laying her sky blue eggs, so I loaded the camera and I got out on the roof and I got what I thought was the nest in the middle of the picture and I photographed it and then I finally developed it when I finished the roll and I printed it and I looked at it and it was a picture of the roof apparently made from an airplane. I mean, there was this great expanse of roof and through the middle a line which was the drain trough and in the middle of the drain trough this little pile of lint which I assume was the robin's nest.

MS. SIMON: From that encounter, the young Szarkowski learned something important. Reality is one thing, a photograph another. A photograph speaks of reality but in its own language. Eventually that idea led to a groundbreaking show, the Photographer's Eye in 1964. It wasn't about art, whatever that might be, but about the common things all photographs share and use to communicate, things like the subject, itself, or the way the camera puts a frame around reality, or the way a small detail can stand as a symbol for a larger reality, war, for example. Szarkowski never doubted that photography could be art, but he also felt it was such a new and different way of making pictures that it couldn't be categorized the way traditional fine art was in the past.

MR. SZARKOWSKI: The standard art historical technology is not very satisfactory for dealing with the history of photography because it is based on a kind of data that assumes that there are schools, that there are academies, that there are licensing systems, there are guilds, there are all these factors that tend to unify the thinking about painting it, at least if we're talking about painting in Western culture, the standard line from Joffo to Matiste, et cetera. That doesn't work for photography. It simply doesn't work.

MS. SIMON: Szarkowski worked out his own approach which he still teaches to young art historians. He thinks there's a place in an art museum for all kinds of photographs, that you can learn something about photography and about seeing from humble pictures as well as great one. Over the years, the museum has shown stars of the photographic art world like Irving Penn, but it also did a show of pictures taken by automatic cameras of bank robberies.

MR. SZARKOWSKI: I think if one approaches it this way, one can talk about the evolution of the entire history of photography including all the photographers, not just those photographers that belonged to this club or the ones that lived in that country or the ones that used big cameras or the ones that used little cameras, you can talk about a shared tradition.

MS. SIMON: Szarkowski's current show is organized around a new theme, the forward march of photographic technology. In the beginning, cameras were big, slow, and cumbersome. Photography was a serious affair. The pictures were dignified, august, deliberate. In 1888, the first Kodak appeared, the Apple Computer of its day. Now everyone was a photographer. The pictures changed again. There are elegant pictures. There are pictures as factual as a scientific report and funny, quirky pictures like this book of cucumber pollination experiments. They seem eccentric, yet self-assured. Szarkowski likes that.

MR. SZARKOWSKI: These vegetables have wonderful expressive, organic shapes, and then if you have several of them, they're more beautiful, and then if you cut some of them in half, you also have the wonderful patterns of the seeds and the delicate little drawing about the way, the pattern of seeds and then it sits in its little seed nest, I mean, this little note saying, "Beaning" --

MS. SIMON: "Beaning seeds in upper half."

MR. SZARKOWSKI: "Bearing seeds in upper half."

MS. SIMON: "Bearing seeds in upper half."

MR. SZARKOWSKI: These two nice fat dumpy ones he puts straight up and over in the corner by themselves. It's right somehow.

MS. SIMON: By the turn of the century, photographs could be reproduced in print. Photographers teamed up with advertisers or they became journalists. Szarkowski loves news photos and he did a show of them in 1973. But even then, he wondered about the marriage on the page between pictures and words.

MR. SZARKOWSKI: We did an exhibition here some years ago of newspaper photographs and enraged our audience by not having the captions along with the pictures, but I was surprised at how seriously people reacted to being deprived of these few words that would make you think that the meaning was in the photograph.

MS. SIMON: Photography and journalism have been partners for a long time. Szarkowski knows the successful products of that partnership like Eugene Smith's photo essay about a country doctor done for Life in 1948. But he can also see where the priorities of photographers and journalists clashed.

MR. SZARKOWSKI: Well, I think it's one of the best stories that Gene Smith ever did, in fact, it might be really my favorite, because it's got two or three wonderful pictures in it, including, of course, this one, which is superb, and this one is a very fine picture. And then the people back in the shop have to figure out a way to make a story out of this that satisfies their own standards of coherence, and so they tack this terrible caption on it. It just gets in the way of this really great picture that is about something altogether different. I mean, you know, it's about this poor overworked, under-trained, under-equipped man, in a little backwoods hospital confronted with problems that are too large for him to solve, and this is just trivial.

MS. SIMON: So a picture in a magazine designed to be thrown away after a week can come back 40 years later to reach new audiences and raise new questions about photography. It's one reason why the museum collects so many different kinds of photographs. Today younger curators like Susan Kizmarak and Peter Galasy have access to 15,000 prints. It's the result of a 1/2 century's worth of collecting, enough to make some people jaded; not Szarkowski. Tell me what you look for in a photograph.

MR. SZARKOWSKI: Something you don't know, something you haven't seen in a photograph before, what do you look for in a person? It should be something new. It should be something a little exciting like a new person, not somebody almost as good as a person you already knew.

MS. SIMON: But how many times can someone do something new in a photograph?

MR. SZARKOWSKI: I don't know. We haven't found out the answer to that question yet.

MS. SIMON: After 150 years of photography, John Szarkowski still believes the most exciting picture of all is the next one. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major story of this Monday, Soviet tanks rolled through Latvia today in a show of force following the Soviet republic's declaration of independence, but Soviet officials said it had to do with a World War II victory parade. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim. That's the Newshour tonight and we'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.