The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, politics and the teachers unions as debated by Lamar Alexanderand Albert Shanker, a TWA crash update from NewsDay editor Adam Horvath, and a "where are they now" report on the Chicago radicals of 1968. It all follows our summary of the news this Thursday. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: President Clinton signed the welfare reform bill into law today. It ends the federal guarantee of cash assistance to the poor, transferring that responsibility to the states. It also requires welfare recipients to go to work after two years, and it sets a lifetime limit of five years for welfare payments. The President had this to say at the bill signing in the White House Rose Garden.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I signed this bill because this is a historic chance where Republicans and Democrats got together and said we're going to take this historic chance to try to recreate the nation's social bargain with the poor. We're going to try to change the parameters of the debate. We're going to make it all new again and see if we can't create a system of incentives which reinforce work in family and independence. We can change what is wrong. We should not have passed this historic opportunity to do what is right.

MR. LEHRER: Bob Dole applauded the welfare legislation and claimed credit for it. He spoke at a campaign rally today in Rutherford, New Jersey, attended also by running mate Jack Kemp and New Jersey Governor Christine Whitman.

SEN. BOB DOLE, Republican Presidential Nominee: Today President Clinton is signing the Dole welfare bill. I'm glad he finally got around to it; he vetoed it twice. [applause] And he'll probably adopt the Dole-Kemp economic plan next week in Chicago. He's done everything but change parties the last 30 days.

MR. LEHRER: The Census Bureau released a report today on the recipients of welfare. It said nearly one in four American children received some sort of public assistance in 1993, and those most likely to be on welfare for the long-term are people under 18 and over 65. The U.S. Army began destroying its chemical weapons today. The burning was done in an incinerator at a base 50 miles outside Salt Lake City. The plan is to burn 14,000 tons of chemical weapons, rockets, and land mines over the next seven years, doing so as part of an agreement the United States made with the former Soviet Union in the late 1980's. On the TWA crash story today, another body was recovered in the wreckage off Long Island. Two hundred and nine of the two hundred and thirty victims have now been found. The lead investigator denied reports that those still missing were seated in the center fuel tank area of the plane. The National Transportation Safety Board Vice Chairman Robert Francis said tests will be done on the fuel tank pumps and on the fuel control panel. The airliner crashed July 17th, killing everyone on board. We'll have more on this story later in the program. In Russia today, National Security Chief Alexander Lebed announced a new truce with Chechen rebels, and President Yeltsin appeared in public for the first time in two weeks speaking from the Kremlin on Russian television. We have more in this report from Lawrence McDonnell of Independent Television News.

LAWRENCE McDONNELL, ITN: It was a performance clearly designed to show that rumors of the President's demise were untrue, his first appearance in front of the cameras since his inauguration two weeks ago, the first time he'd answered journalists' questions in nearly two months. He described Chechnya as Russia's bleeding wound, then blamed the crisis on the shortcomings of his new security chief, General Alexander Lebed.

BORIS YELTSIN, President, Russia: [speaking through interpreter] I gave him the authority he demanded to end the war, but I just don't see any results.

LAWRENCE McDONNELL: Gen. Lebed flew down to Chechnya last night for talks with the Chechen commander, Aslan Mashadov. He quickly discounted the threat by the local commander of Russian forces to bomb Chechnya into submission as a bad joke. In the last few hours, the two men have signed a peace deal designed to separate the warring sides. "We both served as officers in the same army, and nothing is stronger than an officer's word," he said. He also claimed the political status of the region could be worked out in the next two days. That will be more difficult. In Chechnya today, civilians continued to move out of Grozny. They weren't relying on Gen. Lebed's word that the war would soon be over. His word only seems to last as long as he stays in the republic. Every time he leaves, the bombing starts again. The Chechen fighters are staying behind. The problem for Gen. Lebed is that if they remain in control of Grozny, the war will be regarded as a humiliating defeat for the Russian army. Russian soldiers are still dug in around the Chechen capital. Morale has never been lower. They can't be sure what the next order will be--to pull out or to attack. Today they enjoyed another cease-fire, but conscripts here are aware that the commanders who stay behind are determined to beat the rebels, whatever the cost.

MR. LEHRER: And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the teachers unions, a TWA crash update, and the Chicago radicals. FOCUS - EDUCATION MATTERS

MR. LEHRER: Politics and the teachers union is first tonight. Margaret Warner is in charge.

MS. WARNER: The mixing of politics and education is not a new trend. But in this presidential election year it's the teachers and their unions that have come under attack. Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole singled out the unions during his acceptance speech last week at the Republican convention in San Diego.

SEN. BOB DOLE, Republican Presidential Candidate: The teachers unions nominated Bill Clinton in 1992. They're funding his reelection now, and they, his most reliable supporters, know he will maintain the status quo. And I say this--I say this not to the teachers but to their unions. [applause] I say this: if education were a war, you would be losing it. If it were a business, you would be driving it into bankruptcy. If it were a patient, it would be dying. And to the teachers union I say when I am President, I will disregard your political power for the sake of the parents, the children, the schools, and the nation.

MS. WARNER: Dole continued his attacks on teachers unions today. He spoke this afternoon at a rally in Rutherford, New Jersey.

SEN. BOB DOLE: We ought to make certain in America this is America, that every child, every child in America, low income parents, lower middle income parents, that the parents can make a choice to send their children to school, their choice, so they get a good education, a good education. So we're going to have opportunity scholarships in my administration, and I said in San Diego that if the American education system were a business, it would be failing. If it were a patient, it would be dying. We need to turn education back to the teachers and back to the parents and take it away from the union leaders and make it work in America again.

MS. WARNER: Now, two different perspectives on the issue of teachers unions and their influence. Former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexanderis an adviser to the Dole-Kemp campaign. He served as Secretary of Education during the Bush administration. Al Shanker is the president of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation's second largest teachers union, was nearly 1 million members. He's held the post since 1974. Welcome, gentlemen. Governor Alexander, given some specifics to support the charge made by Bob Dole that it's the teachers union standing in the way of improving the public schools.

LAMAR ALEXANDER, Dole/Kemp Adviser: [Nashville] Well, let's do this right here with Mr. Shanker here. Why doesn't he join me and Sen. Dole in taking the Milwaukee experiment, which has given thousands of poor children, black kids, Hispanic kids from the inner city a chance to go to the school of their choice. And a Harvard study now shows that in the third or fourth year they're making real substantial gains in learning, that they're in safe schools. Let's expand that experiment to ten urban areas around the country, New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and give those poor kids a chance to go to some of the same schools that my children and the President's children and the Vice President's children have a chance to go to. And Mr. Shanker will join me in that. That will give us a good indication that Sen. Dole and I are wrong.

MS. WARNER: So, Governor, are you saying that the basic problem, as you see it, with the teachers union is that they oppose school choice?

GOV. ALEXANDER: One problem is that the teachers union opposed school choice, they get in the way of giving teachers more freedom to make their own decisions. They opposed, although Mr. Shanker did not, to be fair about it, my efforts in Tennessee to pay teachers more for teaching well. They're not the only problem, but they're standing in the way and a good place to start is why not give more kids a chance who are poor to choose among schools so that nobody's child is forced to go to a bad school. That would be a good place to start.

MS. WARNER: All right. Mr. Shanker.

AL SHANKER, American Federation of Teachers: [New York City] Well, this is just pure politics and teacher bashing. First, on the voucher issue, uh, the voucher issue has come up in referenda in three states. The people of the state of Oregon, California, and Colorado voted on it. In all three of these votes, they rejected vouchers by a two to one vote, so did the people of Washington, D.C., about a decade and a half ago, when they voted on the voucher question. On the Milwaukee issue, the whole thing is still open. This has been in existence since--the experiment has been in existence for five years. And there have been five annual reports. And now there's a last minute one that came out last week, which is, which is really quite faulty in its statistical analysis. But in the five regular reports, which were commissioned by the state, they basically say that the kids like these schools and the parents like them, but they're not learning any more than youngsters in public schools are learning, or comparable youngsters who tried to get into these schools and who didn't make it. I think the important thing here is I don't see why a presidential candidate gets on national television to bash teachers and the organizations that they belong to because they differ on something like vouchers. After all, the Japanese have a great school system. They've got no vouchers. The Australians have a great school system; no voucher system over there. The Germans have terrific schools; the Scandinavians. Let's face it. Every other democratic, industrial countryin the world has figured out a way of having a good school system, a system where they don't allow disruptive youngsters to destroy the education of all the other systems where they maintain high academic standards, systems where they won't automatically promote you or graduate you or let you into college. I mean, these are the reforms that are important. This--this image of trying to create a picture in parents' minds that, that the federal government is going to give them enough money to send all their kids to highly desire and highly selective private schools is just nonsense. It's pure politics, and I think the people will see through it.

MS. WARNER: Governor, what about that point, that the school systems abroad that we so admire, they don't have vouchers?

GOV. ALEXANDER: Well, in fact, my children have attended Australian schools. We lived there for a while, and they went to government schools there and they went to private schools there, and in fact, the Australians do have government support for the Catholic schools. But let's go back to Mr. Shanker's point. The average tuition at the private schools in America is about $2,000 that are elementary schools. The average tuition for high schools is about $3500. We're not talking about kids just going to private and religious schools. We're talking about a working mother whose kid is in the third grade, and the teacher doesn't recognize the child's learning disability or the school isn't safe, or the school closes at 3 and the mother works till 5. Why not let her have the choice I have or that President Clinton has and move her child to another school that suits her and her child? In Milwaukee, which is the only place in America that the teachers union have been defeated so that we can have this kind of experiment, this Harvard Study at the Kennedy School of Government shows that in the third and fourth year the children made such gains in reading and math that if that were applied across the board in America, it would reduce the difference between what white kids learn and what minority kids learn by a third to a half. Now we all talk about children. Why don't we do this?

MS. WARNER: Gentlemen, I want to move this beyond the school choice issue, if I could, and deal with teachers unions and how they operate in public schools today. Mr. Shanker, let me just ask you to respond to something that Bob Dole said--you've heard it a couple of times--if education were war, you'd be losing it. Is he right? I mean, is the state of public education today in trouble?

MR. SHANKER: I think public education is in trouble. I think that, by and large, students in the United States are not learning up to the standards of students in most other industrial countries, and I think it's deplorable, and I think if we keep going along, along these same lines, that we will really face very grave consequences as a people and as a nation. So I think something has to be done about it. The question is not that we have a problem and does something have to be done. It's what should we do? Should we do something that nobody else has done and should we take a flawed study that just came out six days ago and say that's the answer, now 50 million youngsters should be going to private schools because, because one study says that this works, or do we do what these other countries have done and set up decent public school systems?

MS. WARNER: All right. Let me ask you then, what critics say is that teachers unions have made it hard to set up a decent public school system. They say, for instance, that you've negotiated work rules and tenure rules that reward seniority over competence, that you do make it difficult to reward teachers who teach well, versus just simply those who've been in the tenure track longest, that you have a grievance procedure that makes it hard to get rid of bad teachers, that the teachers unions in general oppose competency testing for teachers. I mean, do these critics have a point?

MR. SHANKER: Well, the critics have a point but they're not really talking about what unions teachers stand for. I personally and the American Federation of Teachers have strongly supported the idea of a very difficult competency test given to teachers before they come into teaching. And we've--remember, we don't hire the teachers. We don't train them. We don't determine what textbooks they're going to use. We don't set homework policy. When our members try to get the students to do their homework and to work hard so that they can learn, and then if a student doesn't do that, they flunk the student, very often the school board, somebody from the school board or the principal's office comes in and says we want everybody to pass; we don't want anybody to flunk. So, you know, if Chrysler were going down and Toyota were selling lots of cars, I doubt that Bob Dole would be standing up there giving a speech attacking the United Automobile Workers. He'd say something is wrong with the management of the automobile industry. And I think something is wrong with the management of schools but it's not the union that runs the schools.

MS. WARNER: Mr. Alexander.

GOV. ALEXANDER: Well, the union does a lot to stand in the way, and since that's the subject of the discussion, let me be specific. When I was governor, as Mr. Shanker knows, I tried to raise the pay of Tennessee teachers by 70 percent if they were among the master teachers and 20 percent for all of them. The National Education Association defeated that the first year, although we overcame them the second.

MS. WARNER: That is the largest teacher union, NEA, yes.

GOV. ALEXANDER: That's the largest. The second thing I tried to do was to pay the liability insurance of all the teachers just as we do state employees so teachers can't be sued. The National Education Association, the largest teachers union, defeated that, using the teachers' own dues for that because that's how they get the teachers to join. When I was education secretary, I tried to get Keith Geiger, again with the NEA, the president, to go with me to try to give classroom teachers more control over how they spend federal funding--federal money. He said no because he wants to keep that control in Washington. The unions aren't the only problem. Parents had even more responsibility, but the unions are in the way, and Bob Dole's right to take them on.

MS. WARNER: Mr. Shanker.

MR. SHANKER: Well, you know, look, I went down at that time because I thought that the teachers deserved salary increases; I supported Lamar Alexander's program on that. So you've got two unions and each one of them took a different position on that. But I must say that now, now that it's ten or twelve years later, all that money was spent on supposedly giving superior teachers more money, that's had no effect on the scores in the state of Tennessee. There is no evidence. There is no reacher that's been done that shows that that great reform, which was pushed through and which was very unpopular with teachers, has helped children at all. So--

MS. WARNER: Mr. Alexander.

MR. SHANKER: --you know, it's not--not every reform is a good reform; some reforms don't have any effect at all; some of them are bad reforms.

GOV. ALEXANDER: Well, Mr. Shanker is being selective about his evidence. He said in July in a letter to the "Washington Times" there was no evidence that giving poor children more choices of good schools helps. Now the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard has conducted a study showing that it makes--that it does do that.

MS. WARNER: But what about his point about Tennessee?

GOV. ALEXANDER: So why, why are we just--

MS. WARNER: What about his point about Tennessee and the reform that you did manage to push through, did it make a difference?

GOV. ALEXANDER: His point about Tennessee is wrong. It is very hard to say that one change in a teacher's salary affects the whole school, but thousands of Tennessee teachers make more for teaching well, and they feel that their children have benefited from that, they've used the money to help stay in the classroom, it's given more professionalism to the teaching coordinates, one thing that has helped us make some progress in our state through Republican and Democratic administrations over the last ten years--

MS. WARNER: Mr. Shanker, let me ask you to respond to one other point Bob Dole made, which had to do with the political influence of teachers unions, and essentially saying it's too great, too much money comes from the teachers unions to the Democratic Party, there's too much political involvement. By my count, you all--UM, NEA, together, are going to have 13 to 15 percent of the delegates to the Democratic convention next week. Why?

MR. SHANKER: Well, you know, that's a very recent development. That did not happen until the national political parties got into the business of, of vouchers and tuition tax credits, and things like that. Before that, we never endorsed presidential candidates, before 1976. And I, I think the NEA was the same thing. And in quite a few states, we support Republican governors; we support Republican legislators; we support Republican senators, so that right now because of the fact that the last few Republican presidential candidates have decided to make this a political issue, and those of us in public education feel that when you start financing all the schools, of all the different sectarian groups, and language groups and racial groups and religious groups, and everything else. That's the beginning of the end of the country. I was thrilled by Bob Dole's speech where he said this is one America and one country, and he talked about the dangers of breaking it apart, and then he went on to make the proposal which has the greatest danger of all of breaking it apart, and that's to have all of our youngsters start moving to schools based on their race and on religion and they're private schools, and we don't have a common curriculum. And that's what we're concerned about, and that's why, by and large, we've been in one party at the national level. But at the local and state level, we're very bipartisan.

MS. WARNER: And do you think that level of involvement and the money will help you forestall all efforts to get school choice?

MR. SHANKER: Well, it will help to forestall it at the national level, but of course this is also happening at the state level. There will be referenda. There will be state legislatures. So you can't--you can't forestall it by just handling presidential elections. But also, I think, you know that when it comes to the presidential election, if you look at the kind of cuts that the Republican Congress proposed to the President last year in education and training programs and all sorts of programs for children, and what the President did with his vetoes and his insistence, if you were a teacher, whether you're a member of a union or not, and if you cared for the children that you teach, there'd be absolutely no question in your mind as to who you'd be supporting and which Congress you'd want and who you'd want in there as President if you care about the future of public education in the country.

MS. WARNER: We're actually out of time. Governor, a quick rebuttal, quick comment.

GOV. ALEXANDER: It ought to be a political issue. If you care about education and you like the way it is, vote for Bill Clinton. If you want high standards and different kinds of schools, and especially if you're middle income and poor, if you want a chance with some money to take your child to the same kinds of schools that people with money have, then you should vote for Bob Dole and the Republicans.

MS. WARNER: All right.

GOV. ALEXANDER: We're trying to change.

MS. WARNER: Thanks, gentlemen, very much. We'll have to leave it there.

MR. LEHRER: Now to a TWA crash update and to Elizabeth Farnsworth.

MS. FARNSWORTH: After TWA Flight 800 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Long Island July 17th, one of the largest recovery and investigative teams in history was assembled to locate victims and figure out why the tragedy occurred. The U.S. Navy contributed three ships and six hundred and fifty personnel to help in the recovery, including 120 divers who have made more than 2,500 dives. The National Transportation Safety Board has 30 investigators working around the clock, and the FBI has more than 200 agents investigating the case. Now, five weeks after the crash, bodies of 209 of the 230 victims have been found. After frequent delays due to poor weather and limited visibility for divers, more than half of the Boeing 747 has been lifted from the Atlantic. But investigators still have not determined what caused the crash. In the first week of press briefings, FBI Director James Kallstrom appeared confident that an answer would be found fairly quickly. UPDATE - TWA FLIGHT 800 - SEARCH FOR CLUES

JAMES KALLSTROM, FBI Director, New York: [July 25] We have a very, very active investigation. We're still getting very good information, so when the day comes, and I think it'll be soon, I don't think it'll be too long, whether it's going to be three or four days or a week, I don't know the answer, that we decide collectively and based on science and based on good forensic investigation, we will be able to move swiftly, aggressively, professionally.

MS. FARNSWORTH: But since then, officials have been much more cautious as the investigation proved to be difficult and complex. On Monday, Kallstrom was asked--

REPORTER: Is it conceivable that 99 percent of the aircraft could have been brought up and you still wouldn't have any answers for what happened?

JAMES KALLSTROM: Well, sure, it's conceivable. I guess anything's conceivable. But I think it's--I hope it's unlikely. We still feel that, that we will get the answers.

MS. FARNSWORTH: From the beginning, the two-track investigation led by the NTSB and the FBI has considered three possibilities--a missile, a mechanical malfunction, or, more likely, a bomb. But so far, there is no conclusive forensic evidence for any of those possibilities. A key focus of the inquiry now is the center fuel tank. Damage in that area has led investigators to conclude an explosion occurred there. But in his press conference today, Robert Francis, NTSB Vice Chairman, refused to go any further.

ROBERT FRANCIS, Vice Chairman, NTSB: You know, I think it's fair to say that in that area of the central fuel tank that, that there is evidence that there was an explosion, and, uh, and I don't think I'm going to go further than that.

MS. FARNSWORTH: So the question remains why, what caused that fuel tank to explode? To explore that and other questions, we're joined by Adam Horvath, a deputy Long Island editor for "Newsday." He's overseeing the paper's coverage of the TWA crash. Thanks for being with us, Mr. Horvath.

ADAM HORVATH, Newsday: [New York City] Thank you.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Let's start with what is known. How do investigators know that there was an explosion in the central fuel tank area?

MR. HORVATH: Well, there are some indications from inside the central fuel tank, the way that it's burned, the pieces that it pulled up are indicative of an explosion. And one thing that's proved key are the rivets that--behind the seams of the airplane that have popped in a way that's consistent with an explosion, although they can't be sure, as I understand it, what type of explosion, there's a difference between the low energy explosion of a fuel tank, or the high energy explosion of something like a bomb.

MS. FARNSWORTH: They're exploring whether there could have been a vapor explosion, is that right? Can you explain that?

MR. HORVATH: What--the scenario that they're looking at is because the central fuel tank which holds about 12,000 gallons of jet fuel was mostly empty, the standard for empty is about fifty to a hundred gallons left in the tank. It kind of sloshes around in there, and you can't get that last bit out. Vapors can develop in the mostly empty tank. This is considered routine. It's not considered a safety hazard normally, but it's possible that those vapors for some reason did develop into something that is--that could explode.

MS. FARNSWORTH: There would be various explanations for that, right? They could have gotten very hot for sitting on the ground in New York, it was 80--over 80 degrees--or would there be some mechanical reason inside the tank that they're looking at?

MR. HORVATH: Well, there's a difficulty with the temperature because they don't believe there would have been any reason they would have been hot enough to explode on their own without some sort of catalyst. There had been some problems with the fuel system in the 747's. Boeing had put out a warning about the fuel pumps corroding. These are kinds of things that have been known to lead to small fires but nothing along the lines of a catastrophic explosion. The other kind of thing that could set it off, obviously, would be an explosive device planted near enough to the central fuel tank, the tank that sets it off.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Let's talk about the bomb possibility. What's the latest on that?

MR. HORVATH: Well, the latest is the same place it's really been for almost a month, which is there are many investigators who believe a bomb is the likeliest possibility that largely comes from the way the plane seemed to have blow up so suddenly, without warning. There has never been a case of a simple break-up that fast in mid-air in a plane that wasn't landing or on the ground or something like that. So there is that strong possibility in investigators' minds, but they haven't been able to find any evidence from the plane itself or from the bodies that they've recovered that shows the characteristics of a bomb. Those characteristics are pretty distinctive. It has to deal with the pattern of pitting on metal parts or something that's called gas washing, that's indicative of the type of shock wave that you get from--from a bomb, whether it be plastic explosive or some other kind of a device. So they've been unable to get any of that or any explosive residue from any part of the plane that they've pulled up.

MS. FARNSWORTH: There was that test right in the beginning that showed some residue and then apparently a more sophisticated test showed that the first test had been wrong. What do investigators say about that? Do they--do some people still believe that first test was right?

MR. HORVATH: Well, there's been some dispute about what those tests show and the reliability of the tests on the site. The machine they have on site obviously they brought up there to indicate what pieces of the plane might be worth bringing down to Washington for a more complete test. It's an elaborate process. The very fact that the machine picked up something that might have been an explosive residue doesn't--the investigators have stopped calling that a positive test. They started calling that something that's just indicative, and when they bring it down to Washington, they don't find anything, it's inconclusive. It's possible that they'll find something that the Washington equipment picks up and is able to say definitively that's explosive residue, but so far nothing has turned out that way.

MS. FARNSWORTH: And what about the missile as an explanation, what's happened with that? Twelve eye witnesses, including a National Guard pilot, said they saw something arching up towards the sky. What's happened with that--arching up towards the plane?

MR. HORVATH: Right, exactly. It's difficult even to discuss the missile theory in a way without feeling like you've slipped into some parallel universe where this is possible. Obviously nothing like that has ever happened before, but it's possible, whether it's a bomb or a mechanical malfunction, that nothing quite like it has ever happened before to U.S. aircraft. The missile theory, yes, the eyewitnesses, the problem with that is that it's not uncommon, especially when one witness is on television, for other witnesses to tell a similar story. That's a problem with the eyewitnesses, and the other problem is that the range of missiles, it's theoretically possible that a missile could reach that plane at its altitude. You'd have to mount it on a boat that would have had to get away somehow. People would have had to not hear the noise of the missile or somehow fire it from land, from something fairly elaborate. It's unlikely a shoulder-fired missile from the land several miles from where the plane was offshore could actually reach the plane.

MS. FARNSWORTH: But it hasn't been ruled out. The FBI hasn't ruled it out?

MR. HORVATH: They haven't ruled a thing out, and the reason is they don't have any evidence pointing them in one particular direction, and they don't have evidence--any evidence that rules out any of the theories. So they stick with them.

MS. FARNSWORTH: And back on the mechanical failure, beyond the fuel tank and what might have happened there, is there any other mechanical failure that's being seriously looked at now?

MR. HORVATH: The fuel tank has really gotten a lot of attention in the past several days or even a couple of weeks because I think it's the one thing that they've actually had evidence that says, yes, there's an explosion here. Whether it's the explosion that brought down the plane or something else happened first, that's what they can't be sure of. The problem with any mechanical problem, including that one, is there's never been one to bring down a plane where there was no time, no indication of any mechanical malfunction before the plane actually exploded or, or crashed, no time for the flight crew to signal the ground, the transponder clicks off at the same instant as everything else on the plane. Again, it's never happened before, but it could be the first time, no matter what brought down the plane.

MS. FARNSWORTH: And finally, we just have a few seconds left, but what about background checks on passengers, is the FBI still doing that?

MR. HORVATH: Well, yeah. They've been hesitant to go the full route of interviewing all the families of the victims, given that they haven't yet gotten the evidence to declare it a crime, that, that means that they need to proceed that way. But they have been doing checks on the backgrounds of the passengers on the plane, and the passengers who were on the first leg of the plane from Athens to JFK.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Well, Adam Horvath, thank you very much. That was--that helped. Thank you.

MR. HORVATH: Thank you.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, a Chicago radicals update. FINALLY - RADICAL CHANGES

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, geared to next week's Democrats convention in Chicago a "where are they now" story. Elizabeth Brackett of WTTW-Chicago reports.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: A touch of mustard, a splash of balsamic vinegar, a bit of olive oil, he serves the vinaigrette, while she mixes the salad greens. He checks the refrigerator for or'deuvres, while she inspects the garden of their Chicago townhouse for damage from the storm the night before.

BERNARDINE DOHRN: You know these little babies, I think they needed the rain, but this is a little more than anybody bargained for.

MS. BRACKETT: They could be any successful middle-age professional couple--unless you know their past.

BERNARDINE DOHRN: White youth must choose sides now. We must either fight on the side of the oppressed, or be on the side of the oppressors.

MS. BRACKETT: A generation ago, the FBI called them the most dangerous radicals in America. Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, two of the most visible and charismatic leaders of Students for a Democratic Society, the militant arm of the anti-war movement, and the even more militant breakaway group, the Weathermen. They spent a decade underground to avoid bombing and riot charges. The images clash so powerfully, they raise inevitable questions about radical rage giving way to bourgeois comfort.

BERNARDINE DOHRN: There's no right answer. Am I the militant in black leather, shouting slogans, or am I--I was described once as a suburban matron--I mean, you know, I feel like we came into our adulthood at a moment in time where we had the opportunity to have purpose to our lives, and I feel completely fortunate to have been a part of that. I want to still be part of that. I try to live my life still part of that. I have many personal apologies to give to people for things I said and hurts that I did, and of course, I wish we'd done better, so I wish all of that, but don't we all wish that about our lives? In that sense, I feel lucky and unapologetic.

MS. BRACKETT: To understand why Dohrn feels that way, you have to go back to the era, the late 60's, 1968 to be exact, a year of political assassinations, riots, and growing opposition to the Vietnam War. When Democrats met in Chicago, the fear debate over the war split the delegates inside the convention hall and outside anti-war protesters were met in the streets by a baton- wielding Chicago police force. To some, including Dohrn and Ayers, the country felt like a police state ripe for a revolution. Twenty-eight years later, their perception of those days has not changed.

BILL AYERS: I'm sure there are people who think that the opposition to the war was wrong and would like to re-write that history, but the opposition to the war was right, and the opposition came from all quarters, and those who opposed it should be proud of that and should say they're proud of that. To apologize for that opposition would be, I think, a perversion. To apologize for militantly opposing racism, which I think is needed now more than ever, to me is a perversion. On a personal level, are there things that I did wrong like every human being? There are thousands of things that you might do differently, you might re-think after the fact. But in terms of throwing oneself against the war in the 1960's and 70's, that was the right thing to do.

MS. BRACKETT: With the Democrats coming back to Chicago for the first time since 1968, the radical actions of those days are being reexamined. But Dohrn and Ayers it was more than just marching in the streets. One year after the convention they were talking revolution.

BERNARDINE DOHRN: [1969] The way that the war has carried out, as you know, from the student movement of the last few years, is that there's very few institutions in this society that are free from participation in the war, and as long as they're participating in the war, we feel that they are all subjects of attack.

MS. BRACKETT: And attack they did. In the fall of 1969, the Weathermen staged the Days of Rage, four days of violent demonstrations in Chicago. Cars were overturned, store windows smashed.

MS. BRACKETT: What people remember about those four days is that that's when the movement went over the line, that's when it went into illegal activity. It went beyond protest; it went into violence.

BERNARDINE DOHRN: The movement was never not into violence. Violence--the violence was all around us. The violence was being done. The violence was being done by the body bags every day, by a million people in Southeast Asia being killed. The violence was a given. So it's true that we tried to hurl ourselves into the middle of things. But, again, I just want to emphasize that compared to what?

BILL AYERS: We reached a point where we were operating outside of the law, and that is a lot because we were being harassed by the law, and the law was acting outside the law. So in a sense, you know, everyone lost their bearings, and what we did was certainly serious and, and had consequences for us personally, but I don't think it was, it was anything that was uncalled for. I mean, I think it was called for.

MS. BRACKETT: At the news conference where Dohrn had called for attack, she was flanked by two fellow Weathermen. Six months later, Ted Gold was dead and Kathy Budine was seen fleeing from the rubble of a Greenwich Village townhouse. Two more bodies were found in what appeared to be a Weatherman bomb factory.

BILL AYERS: I It was a terrible tragedy and one that caused, I think, a huge not only sense of loss but kind of a permanent scar but also a, a moment to stop and think and pull back from what might have been a real, really disastrous course.

MS. BRACKETT: Three days after the townhouse explosion, Ayers and Dohrn skipped a court date from the Days of Rage case and went underground. Initially, fiery tape recordings were sent to reporters.

BERNARDINE DOHRN: [recording] This is Bernardine Dohrn. Within the next 14 days we will attack a symbol or institution of American injustice.

MS. BRACKETT: Over the next decade, the Weathermen claimed credit for 25 bombings but eventually the movement broke apart, and Dohrn and Ayers began a life together in New York, still underground. Ten years later, Dohrn and Ayers finally turned themselves in, in Chicago. Federal bombing conspiracy charges had been dropped because of improper FBI surveillance.

MS. BRACKETT: As you look back now, the bombings, what the Weathermen did claim credit for, would you do it differently now?

BILL AYERS: Oh, I don't--I don't know that there's much--I doubt it, not if the same conditions prevailed and the same kind of--and I knew what I knew then and didn't know any more than I knew then, probably not.

MS. BRACKETT: Local assault and battery charges remained against Dohrn. She was fined $1500 and placed on probation. She remained defiant.

BERNARDINE DOHRN: Resistance by every means necessary is happening and will continue to happen within the United States as well as around the world, and I remain committed to the struggle ahead.

BILL AYERS: Joan was saying there's many, many--

MS. BRACKETT: Today teaching is the central fact of Ayers' life. A full professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, he's written four books.

BILL AYERS: I've been a lot of things, but fundamentally I've been a teacher or someone who's tried to teach, struggled towards teaching, because I found that teaching was a place that I could live my values, teaching was a place that, that I could make a difference, teaching was a place that I seem to--my best self seemed to come out.

MS. BRACKETT: With his love of teaching and his distrust of bureaucracy, it's not surprising that Ayers has been deeply involved in school reform in Chicago, and the effort to decentralize this troubled urban school system.

SPOKESPERSON: Shall we fax it back to them today? We should.

MS. BRACKETT: Dohrn is also heavily involved in reforming a major social system. Chicago has often criticized juvenile court. On the staff of the law school, at Northwestern University, Dohrn heads the Children and Family Justice Center.

BERNARDINE DOHRN: We do at the Children and Family Justice Center pediatric law. That is to say we represent kids in a whole variety of issues in which they come in touch with the courts. So there's no issue that children aren't touched by and affected by. And it also, I think, is like the issue of the environment and peace. It makes you think about what kind of a world you want to live in.

MS. BRACKETT: Her work gets high praise from an unlikely supporter, the judge who oversees the juvenile court in Cook County, Chief Judge Donald O'Connell.

DONALD P. O'CONNELL, Cook County Circuit Court: My first reaction was that somebody who has been so against the orderly society and government to now suggest to us and presume to suggest to us ways to resolve problems, I had to be--it had to be proven to me that she had the intentions that I was told that she had and the competence I was told that she had. And she clearly had both. She is very sincerely dedicated to the work that she's doing. She is an outstanding advocate for the children, the interests of children, and has brought many ideas and a great deal of focus and attention on problem areas of the court that need attention.

MS. BRACKETT: But the past does intrude on her work. Dohrn has a law degree but cannot practice. She was denied a license in part because of a seven-month jail term she served after refusing to testify before a grand jury. The jury wasinvestigating a botched robbery of a Brinks truck in which a guard and two state troopers were killed. Weatherman Kathy Budine was sentenced to 20 years to life for the crime. It happened a year after Dohrn came above ground, and she has denied any involvement. There are still those who haven't forgotten or forgiven. Northwestern Law School Professor Dan Polsby is one of them.

DANIEL POLSBY, Northwestern University Law School: There were many acts as domestic terrorism. It seems to me that in the world as we know it right now. He can't simply walk away from acts of domestic terrorism and say, well, okay, that was a long time ago. It wasn't that long ago, for one thing, and for another thing, it has never been apologized for, and it seems to me that repentance has to proceed forgiveness and not come sometime later.

MS. BRACKETT: He is not alone. Thomas Foran was the U.S. Attorney during the Days of Rage.

THOMAS FORAN, Former U.S. Attorney: I'd say they still are against the community; they're still anti-authoritarian; they still think that they know their own little secret of how the world should run that's different than the overwhelming majority of the people. There's no way that anybody would say either of those people had any impact in Chicago. Chicago's a big city. These people are nobodies, and to try to give them attention is an outrage.

MS. BRACKETT: Dohrn and Ayers do not react to those who say they are still outside the system any more than they do to those who say they sold out, but the years have made a difference. Their family is as important as their activism now. It was their children that brought them out of the underground.

BERNARDINE DOHRN: When I finally realized that the kids were going to be getting older and older and not being able to bring kids home and not have--and having a strange life, that made me be willing to go through that.

MS. BRACKETT: They have raised three teenagers--middle child Malik Cochise, named after Malcolm X and a 19th century Apache chief, came home from a Chicago White Sox game the night we were there. Their oldest, Zade Atheola, named after a Black Panther killed in a shootout with police in 1973, is studying film in California. Sixteen year old Chesa, Kathy Burdine's son, has been raised by Dohrn and Ayers since his mother was jailed when he was 14 months old.

BILL AYERS: The kind of intimacy that we have has developed over, you know, 25 years, and, and includes raising three extraordinary kids, and really sharing every minute of that. And that's been kind of central to our lives in the past 20 years.

MS. BRACKETT: Also central, the desire to make a fundamental radical change in society. Would they do it all again? They say, absolutely. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major story of this Thursday, President Clinton signed a welfare bill transferring power from the federal government to the states. The new law sets time limits for welfare benefits and requires recipients to work. We'll see you tomorrow night with Shields & Gigot, among other things. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.